Week 8, Monday 18th March 2013

For this Monday we had to finish the entire story (which we did !) in order to do a feedback with the class. Every video was projected to the class and we had to comment the video, react, and proposed ideas or changes. 

Thanks to this feedback we can improve our video : We have to put two slides (the color palette and the ingredients) at the end of the video, check the pronunciation, shorten the slides, and add at the beginning of the video a slide to introduce the story and ourselves !

We still have work to do !

Our story !

We have finish to edit our story, at last ! :D 

Here it is !

What we have done!

-Finish the story : DONE ! :)

-Finish the drawings : QUITE DONE.... :/

-Editing the video : NOT DONE AT ALL ! :'(

We have almost finish our drawings but we met many problems : at the beginning we all had a different idea of the little girl but now we have find one. Then the second problem is that the little girl was made by two different person. And then, it is very long to edit the pictures !

Here are two examples of Mary, the little girl :

An here is George and Mary in the kitchen :

Now we have to finish editing the video !!!!!

Our final story, at last ! :D

Here is our story finally over ! It took us several hours and weeks to refine it but we managed to ! Tell us if any changes need to be made ;)

Page 1

Hello ! My name is Mary ! I have no family and I live in an orphanage.

Page 2

Today is Monday. I love cheese !

Page 3

Hello ! My name is George and I love cheese too !

Page 4

Today is Tuesday. We want to draw a mouse.

Page 5

What colours do we need to draw a mouse in a garden ?

Pink for the ears and tail, red for the flowers, green for the grass, blue for the sky, grey for the body of the mouse, black for the eyes and nose, and yellow for the sun !

Page 6

Today is Wednesday. I am sad because George is not here.

Page 7

Today is Thursday. We are playing in the garden.

Page 8

Today is Friday. A family is here to adopt me.

Page 9

But they think that George is dirty.

Page 10

The family does not want to adopt me and George.

Page 11

Today is Saturday. We want to cook a cheesecake !

Page 12

What do we need to make a cheesecake ?

Page 13

Biscuits, sugar, butter, flour, cream, and cheese !

Page 14

Today is Sunday. Mary is worried because another family is here.

Page 15

Great! They want to adopt me and George ! We are so happy ! 

Week 7 , Monday 11th March 2013

What a difficult Monday we had ! 

This Monday was a special one. A former English teacher went in our class in order to explain us the software GIMP which is a photo editing software. It was very interesting because with her explanations, I understood many things which were useful for our final video.

Then, half an hour before the end of class, we met a HUUUUUUUUGGE problem ! Our story was too long. We had to write approximately five or siw words per page, but we wrote "long" sentences, so we had to take a short cut to our story.

WE WERE SO LATE !


But finally, we did it ! We managed to finish the story but we have to finish the drawings and start editing the video, which is not that simple ! And for next week we have to finish all our work and we will project our video to the class.

Wish us good luck ! ;)

Week 6, Monday 4th March 2013

WEEK 6... A BAD WEEK :/

We made again and again lot of mistakes with the computer of our teacher ... For example: be connected with the login of our teacher ! Because of us, she couldn't connect on the internet !
Because of our silly things, we were obliged to separate us and to go seeing with other groups. 

During the first part of the course, we talked on audacity about our story. we agreed on alomost everything ! It was great.
Then (separated in different groups), we saw 2 websites which are going to help us to build the structure of our story (drawings, paints, photos ...). 

• In the first website, voicethread, we saw that we can  speak about a story and circle what we are talking about and many other things. I must admit, I have not yet seen the tutorial ... But I think it is very easy to use.
• Then, we saw another website, which is wordle. In this one we learnt how to play with words ! For example, if you write the word "dog" five times, the word will be written in big lettre !

Now that we have seen all these applications, we just have to work !

week 5 --> my feelings and difficulties

FEELINGS AND DIFFICULTIES.

Our Teacher gave us a sheet of paper which will help us to realize what are our difficulties and how to express our feelings. That is what I am going to do...

Being forced to speak English for 2 hours, I learnt some vocabulary like knit ! I realized that I'm doing lot of efforts to correct sentences make make correct sentences ! But it is a good way to progress in English.

I thought that create a story for children will be easy. But it is not what we think ! We have to think to make short sentence, with simple vocabulary ... Eventually it is not easy. The worst is to create a good story and to be agree with the others members. But for that, we have no problem !

Indeed, working in group it is easy for me. But we have to more divide the work because for now, we have done everything together.

Concerning technology, we have lot of difficulties ! Free screen to video doesn't work and now, Laura has a "bug" on her computer ! So we have no computer to work on. I want to thank our teacher who lent us her computer.

Week 5, Monday 18th Frebruary 2013

A BIG PROBLEM !

This week we had a big problem : we didn't have any computer because Laura's had a virus ! (With the cold outside it is normal to get a virus..haha). But fortunately our teacher lent us her laptop and we were able to work on our story project ! 

The goal of the story project is in fact to write a story for primary school children. 
So,at the beginning of the class, our teacher handed out a sheet of paper to each group on which it was written what the children had learnt in English so far. Our group got a CM1-CM2 class from Toulouse. They've learnt some vocabulary about animals, fruits, vegetables, how to introduce themselves, how to talk about their feelings etc...

For this Monday, we had to start writing our story but we had rules to respect : the story must last 5 minutes, we have to write about five or six words per page (Ouch !) use only the present, and include children's skills in. We went on Audacity and Free Screen to Video (the software worked on our teacher's laptop !) and we started writing our story :

We kept the little girl and the mouse : Mary and George. Mary is still an orphan but this time she meets the mouse at lunch. While she was eating, a little mouse juped on the table and ate Mary's cheese. Surprised, Mary wants to talk to the mouse. The mouse, named George, is happy to talk to the little girl and they become best friends ! (It is a short summary of course !)

After this, we had to work on worksheets: Children will work on two types of exercices like Comprehension and Production. They will have to do some exercices (we will create them) on the story which will stay fun !

That is all for today guys ! See you ! ;) 

Week 4, Monday 11th February 2013

Hi Everybody !

This week was the very beginning of the story ! It was the first time we talked about our story, so we just had to find the storyline of our story. But don't forget that the storyline is only the skeleton of our story !

First we had to go on Audacity (a software where we can record our voices while we are talking, very useful !) and on Free Screen to Video (a software which records everything you are doing on your computer) but we couldn't open it, so we only went on Audacity !
Talking about our future story was in fact quite simple : we had to find the main topic, the type, the narrator, the outline, and we had to define the main characters. My team and I almost agreed on everything ! We wanted a friendship between a little girl and an animal. But which animal ? A bird ? An elephant ? A cat ? Finally we agreed on a mouse : small, cute, not frightening, what could be better ? We knew right away that our story would be in a fantastic register and that the story would be narrated by an omniscient narrator.

Now let's talk about our story :

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was an orphan. She was all alone and no one cared about her. The nurses in charge of the orphanage were very mean with her, she was always punished and everyone laughed at her. But one day, the little girl saw a mouse walking out of the wall ! She talked to it, they became friends and  since then they have never left each other!

In our story we wanted to insert a special moral : "You can't judge a book by its cover". DONE !

Then, at the end of the class, our teacher gave us a sheet of paper called "Our weekly reflexive diary". It will help us to organize our ideas, face the difficulties we will meet during the class etc...

In this course I had difficulties to build my sentences. It was hard to find my words therefore I will have to work on the vocabulary ! We learnt how to use Audacity quite well, but we forgot to give our work back to the teacher... Oops ! But we also had a problem with Free Screen to Video which didn't work... We just have to hope that it will work next week !
I think that the most important thing I have learnt was to listen to each others. In a team, talking is something of major importance, we have to debate on ideas to pick the best ones ! Thank God, for the moment we haven't killed each other yet ;)

Week 3

Hi Everybody !

What did we talk on week 3 ? 

I am going to tell you ...

we saw what is important in a story: 

• First, we should have to find a good main character ! it can be an animal or a human. But the most important is that the child could identify himself to the character. The main character should be special. Every part of him is important to the child.We have to be careful on the way our character will be. indeed the way he is wearing is important, his look, his face ... Our teacher showed us pictures of main characters and asked us if they looked scary or not. And we realized that it was thanks to their looks and their clothes that we have could say if they were scary !

•  But we can't create a good story without a good story-line ! But it has to be simple for children to understand: a beginning, adventures, the end. We can ask us some questions to help us to make our skeleton: Who, What, Where, When. 

• We come to the end. It is as important as the rest of the story because it is what the child will remember of it ! 

• We can talk about a special theme in the story like friendship, love, family ... And we can add a moral which will be related to the theme and the story. But it is not necessary !

Week 2

What are the different means of teaching children ?

At the beginning of the class, we studied the oldest techniques and resources of teaching :

- Drawing
- Gestures

- Songs

- Poems

- Stories

- Oral /Voice

After this summary, our teacher showed us a video named "The history of technology in education". Per group of three, each person had a task to accomplish :
- Spot dates
- Spot the method they used at a certain period 

- Spot the name of the period
eg : In the period of cave drawing, in 30 000 BCE, people used to draw on a wall to teach.

After seeing that video, we realized the huge evolution in technology ; we went from cave drawing to the digital age.

Afterwards, we talked about the use of technology : nowadays, technology has to interest children and students can relate on what the teacher is doing by using contemporary methods like the Internet, computers, social networks, overhead projectors and so on.

Hello Everyone !

Welcome to Mathilde, Pauline and Laura's blog !

Here is what we intend to do during this second semester : post articles about what we do in class, share our ideas, doubts, and our progression about our 'Story Writing' project, read all your comments and suggestions about it. We will also contribute to your blog and project !

Have fun everyone !!!