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Information concerning the published Training Material and Teachers Guide1) The Training material is used by trainers to train teachers. It focuses mainly on attitudes towards children’s literature, on analysis and critiques of children’s literature, and on activities in class for promoting children’s reading. This training material is detailed and clear to be sure that neither the spirit, nor the information is lost from one group to another. The material includes most of the transparencies used during the Training. There are 120 pages of training material divided into seven chapters. Trainers go through one chapter (almost 3 hours) of training each day; on the eighth day trainees take exams. · Each chapter is divided in several activities. For each activity the following is specified: ü The name of the activity (ex: Picture Analyze, or Creative Reading, ….) ü The number of the activity ü The time required for implementation ü The objectives of the activity (ie: to learn different methods of presenting children books, or to express understanding of a character through drama) ü The needs (ex: transparency no xx …, colors, scissors) ü Administration of the activity (ie: divide into groups of 4, or individual work) ü Implementation mechanism, which describes all the steps for implementation (the number of steps is dependant of the nature of the activity, it can be 5, 10 or 20…) ü Recommendations, where the trainer can find some additional suggestions/tips 136 transparencies (42 in color and 94 white and black) are also included in this material. It also includes trainees’ homework for the upcoming session, and an introduction written by the committee members who prepared the Training Material.. Training Program: First day: 1- Introduction 2- Folk stories 3- Morales in children’s books 4- Activities with children Second day: 1- Classics 2- Making sense of what you read 3- The unknown story Third day: 1- The unknown story 2- Illustrations in Children’s books 3- How to present a book to children 4- Drama activities Fourth day: 1- Analysing illustrations 2- Levels of reading 3- Creative reading 4- Discussing Natalie Babbitt’s article: The Purpose of Literature: Who Cares? 5- Discussing the books (three kinds of questions) Fifth day: 1- The genre of Children’s Literature ‘s 2- Analysing a book 3- Activities with children 4- Poetic games Sixth day 1- Making Readers 2- Discussing a book 3- Analyzing books 4- Applied activities: - Creating readers./ discussing books/Cross Reading Seventh day 1- Short historical survey 2- Criteria for choosing books 3- Naughty children in books 4- Fantasy and imagination 5- Evaluation of the training Eighth day: Presentation of exam projects (individually or by group) The exam consists of analysing a book and/or designing activities and report results. 2) The first Teachers Guide: This material consists of 174 pages + presentations from MOEHE and MOC) it is divided into two parts: *Different Articles on Children’s Literature: (55 pages.) these articles motivate the reader to think about controversial questions. There might be different point of views, Most of the articles consist of the material used by Ulla Lundqvist, the Swedish expert in the Pilot Training, but some Palestinian articles were added. Primarily, three articles written by two members of the Pilot Training Groups . ** Examples of Activities teachers can implement in their classroom and use as models to invent and develop other activities. (119 p.). 15 children books spanning the age range were chosen. Several activities were designed for each of the books. These activities can be used as models by teachers, to be adapted with other books, other ages, levels or interests of the students…. For example, teachers said it was very difficult for them to read Ann of Green Gables (Dar Al Mouna), mostly because they were not used to the Canadian names in the book and found them difficult to distinguish from one another. A preparation for reading was designed, using a list of all the characters appearing in the story. Each student adopts the name of one character (many students can share the same name… ) and then they play games. For example, every student stands and presents his/her character; every student stands and presents the neighbour to his/her left; all of Ann’s teachers stand and present themselves, then the friends….. Until the class is comfortable with the names. Then the teacher asks the students to read the book and analyse the character they presented (group work), followed by a presentation and discussion. Another activity for Ann of Green Gables is to write the story of a “Palestinian Ann”. Here, the whole class decides the name of the new Ann, the circumstances of her orphanage, who will adopt her, who will be the other characters of the story (neighbors, friends…) where will she be living (ie Jenin for children from Jenin…). Then the class is divided into groups: one group writes the first chapter with all the agreed components, while each of the other groups decide ona chapter/adventure they will write about, specifying her age. After presentating and discussing the first chapter and planning the whole book, each group writes its own chapter. Then there is discussion, a possible changing of details …and the book is created. Activities For “Where the Wild Things Are” (Dar al Mouna): the whole class creates its own monster, each child draws part (eye, wing, leg… ) of that monster; it could have 6 eyes for instance. The children are also asked to give names to all the monsters that appear in the book. Freedom is the theme in “Shadi and the Birds” (Farah inst. For Children Publ.). Activities for this book include small group visits to the Ministry of Culture, libraries, universities, artists, prisoners unions, Internet, searching for various expressions and illustrations of freedom (a title, a poem, a picture, a symbol……). The children subsequently prepare a great exhibition and invite the whole community. In this exhibition, each child or group present their selected object, illustration, etc. This book is about a bird’ in the exhibition there will be a big tree (an old branch) where each child hangs the bird he/she has designed and cut, writing a sentence or a word on its wing which represents his/her participation in the exhibition (the title of the painting, the name of a hero, a verse…) In the book, Shadi’s bird (the one who cannot fly) appears with the other free birds that come to visit him. Iin a drama activity, the children are asked to imagine the discussion that takes place between Shadi’s bird and his friends). The Red Pencil (Farah inst. For Children Publ.), is a story where each color explains how it took its color: In a creative writing activity, children are asked to write stories about colors that were not mentioned in the book. In a painting activity, each group chooses a color and paints a small mural of their country using their selected color as the dominant color, then an element or several elements are chosen to constitute a big mural of their country…. The description of each activity is the same one used in the training material, it includes: the name of the book, the age group of the students, the name of the activity, the objectives of the activity, the time of implementation, the needs, how to administrate the activity (groups..), the implementation mechanism, which describes all the steps in implementation and recommendations, where teachers can find additional information, suggestions or tips. - This teacher’s guide also includes all the homework the teachers will have to do during the training. On the last day of the training, groups of will present a panel of activities they have designed for a book of their choice. - 3- The Second Teacher’s Guide: The second guide is being prepared. It will consist of activities on 20 books. The activities were designed by 166 trainers and take into consideration the creative activities designed by the teachers in the first year of Training. The articles included in the book are locally produced. Their main foci are story telling, folk stories, illustrations, reports on activities around children’s literature in Palestine, and interviews with children who have written literature. |
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