NURSERY RHYMES

(Noelia Barroso, Guiomar Caballero, Clara Vilches, Sandra Anaya, Sara Blanco, Leticia de la Serna)

Last Wednesday we had our first practical lesson of “Exploring Children’s Literature in English”.  We were exhausted after a morning full of classes, but suddenly everything changed… We were victims of a magic spell and, suddenly, we moved backwards to our early childhood and a marvelous feeling involved us. The magic spell was made by warming-up bounding with familiar thoughts and a little of new knowledge, in order to be able to adapt, create and produce the final spell, NURSERY RHYMES.

One of the most important reasons why we moved backwards so easily was that Raquel motivated us to be active and participative, and she made the topic close to us. First, she told us to think if we knew what “Nursery Rhymes” were, and if we could remember any from our childhood. Little by little, we went deeper into the proposed topic, listening typical nursery rhymes and doing different activities and exercises about it. In the last part of the lesson, we learnt different techniques to work with Nursery Rhymes and we showed them in a performance. In groups of 5 or 6 people, we chose one of the Nursery Rhymes worked in class, and we sang them twice in front of the rest of the class.

Nursery Rhymes were the approach to new language since we were only 3 years old, and consequently very important to us, although we didn´t understand what the song was about. Nevertheless, that strange lyrics and hard and old vocabulary, today makes more sense because Nursery Rhymes were not originally created to entertain children but to hide political subversive messages.  Nursery Rhymes are very useful for every year of Primary Education, if we adapt the contents and the activities to the level of each class, and can be done both at the beginning of the class, as warming-up, and at the end of the class. The students learn new vocabulary, practice pronunciation and improve fluency while learning about English culture, historical events, poems and typical places, such as in “LONDON BRIDGE”. The sentences in the Nursery Rhymes are simple and repetitive so are easier to learn and remember. These activities can highly motivate pupils because they have an active role during the lesson.  

In our opinion, the development of the class has been wonderful. We have learnt a lot of new things about the topic and how to apply it as future teachers in the classroom. Also, we have realized the steps that the teacher has followed in order to give us the lesson, in which scaffolding was everywhere.

In our Nursery Rhyme, “London Bridge is falling down”, we have used different types of Choral Speaking techniques, such as ANTIPHON and CUMULATIVE. In the video attached to this post we show the little performance that we made in class. Could you help us to find how we have introduced those techniques?  What do you think about the activities done in class?  What do you think about the methodology Raquel followed? Would you do it in another way? Which types of Choral Speaking techniques have you used and why have you chosen them? What do you think about Nursery Rhymes? Do you think you will use this tool when you become a teacher one day? Did you sing Nursery Rhymes when you were younger?

 We would be very happy if you want to share your thoughts with us!