LEGOmania!! Part A

 Why play Lego bricks in classroom? The answer is simple! Students, especially those of younger age, are highly acquainted with them, as they spend a lot of time creating and recreating their own reality through them.  Therefore, LEGOs provide teachers with a great educational tool which offers a wide variety of grammar and vocabulary challenges not to mention storytelling prompts which students are more than willing to get involved with. 


1) LEGO bricks can help students visualize many grammar rules and syntax structures which kids would find difficult and boring to deal with otherwise. You can teach syntax through LEGO bricks. You can use bricks of different size and shapes to create sequences as simple as Subject Verb Object in Affirmative structures to more complex ones such as comparative structures etc.


LEGO syntax structures

LEGO fun


2) LEGOs can be used to illustrate a story that is being taught in your lesson. You can ask students create a scene with your LEGO characters so as to depict the main scene from the story taught in your equivalent lesson.

3) Talk about characters. You can present some LEGO figures or playmobil characters and engage your students in external appearance description and then move to possible character and feelings analysis. A nice activity would be to take a photo of these characters and apply different filters on through the use of a photo editing application. Then you can ask students make guesses about the characters' feelings in different situations. Take a look for example:

Feelings of love and happiness

Feelings of sadness and mystery
Memories???

Sparkles sparkles!! Oh what a day!!







4) Moreover LEGOs can inspire students create their own story. You can have the activity both ways. You can either set up a scene using LEGOs and ask students to come up with a story or you can even get students split in two parts and have the first group organise a scene and the second one write a story about it and next have them exchange roles.
These students-made Lego-Scenes stories can lead to deep storytelling activities. Students may combine different story parts created daily at school and create a school newspaper or a school novel. A highly inspiring activity would be to create a school blog-spot that would be refreshed with a new LEGO-inspired story part on a daily basis. The next step would be to create a short film using a user friendly application that would develop your photos of these scenes into a film.

Stay tuned! Part B is about to follow!
Good luck!
Maria P.!


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Poetry-based activities (conditionals) in English lessons- Part 1

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Rudyard Kipling - If If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think-and make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out-tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never b
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LEGOmania!! Part B

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Aesop's fables and puppets

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Yesterday was World Animal Day and this was a great chance to use puppetry to bring Aesop's fables to life in my lessons. Aesop was a master of telling morality tales based on animal characters, often with a humorous twist. His tales reveal our stereotypical views and the symbolic meaning of animals: proud lions, busy bees, industrious ants and more. The values of these fables can be highly underlined by the use of glove puppets or finger puppets. Look at some of photos of my puppet friends If you need any scripts on Aesop fables for puppetry play, you can resort to   http://www.kidsinco.com/aesop-fables/.  For example you may want to take a look The lion and the mouse: http://www.kidsinco.com/2008/08/the-lion-and-the-mouse/ The rooster and the fox: http://www.kidsinco.com/2016/01/the-rooster-and-the-fox/ The fox and the cat: http://www.kidsinco.com/2010/05/the-fox-and-the-cat/   If you have the classic books with Aesop fables you can also o
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