I don't like Mondays

Most of times we hear a song we do not realize about the lyrics that songs involves. In this case, I would like to comment a song which reflects an incredible fact happened some years ago. The song I am going to talk about is “I don’t like Mondays”.

When I was fourteen years old I remember my mother told me about a song whose lyrics talked about an American teenager who shot several children and adults who were in the break time in a school which was located opposite her house. Her name is Brenda Ann Spencer, and she took a rifle which was given to her by her father as a Christmas present.

The crime happened in San Diego, California in 1979. As she lived opposite the school, she started to shoot randomly from her bedroom window. Brenda starred in a shootout with several people who were injured and two fatalities in an American school on Monday January twenty-ninth. The incident ended up six hours later and when she was arrested the police officer asked her why she had committed that crime, she simply answered: “ I don’t like Mondays, I have no reason, it was just for fun, I saw children who were like ducks by a pond and a herd of cows surrounding them, easy targets”. Finally, she was found guilty of two murders and assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to serve a minimum prison term of 25 years to life imprisonment in a penal institution for women in Corona, California.

Brenda's crime and his lack of remorse inspired Bob Geldof to write the song "I don't like Mondays", based on the answer given by Brenda when she was asked about the reason for her crime. This fact makes us think about some countries policies are regarding to possession of guns, but this is other topic that may be treated on another occasion.

The song became popular in a few days but not many people knew about its meaning. So I think that we have to listen the songs not only hear, and this activity is very interesting to practice in the classroom with their children. Because children love music we can work their pronunciation, increase vocabulary and discuss in class the meaning of his lyrics, and it is also a fun activity.

I see you in my next post! =)

Creating a fairy tale character

Hello again partners,

As you know, we have been creating several fairy tale characters in the different groups of seminars recently. In my case, we were working about it the last week in my correspondent group of seminar and I really enjoyed it.

Before doing the task we were discussing and working about some fairy tale characters. First of all, we were talking about becoming a fairy tale character if we could choose it. Every pupil said the character they felt more identified or simply their favourite one and we had to give the reasons why we had chosen it. For example, I would like to be “Simba” because he achieves whatever he proposes and he fights for everything he desires. After this, we were given a list of character motifs with their correspondent characteristics, and we had to think about an example of characters which represent him/her. Also our teacher gave an example of a fairy tale character she had invented completing a list of characteristics related to that character. Finally, we started to do the task, completing every characteristic of the fairy tale character we were willing to create such as: appearance, personality, thoughts, goals, interactions with other characters, etc. Furthermore, our teacher told us two websites to find key vocabulary and carry out the activity in an easier way. As we did not have enough time to finish the task in the classroom we did it at home. The aim was none other than creating a new believable fairy tale character.

In addition, this is a very good task to do with children because it has got many different benefits such as: strengthening their creativity and imagination when inventing a character with a specific role and it promotes the incorporation of ICT in the classroom and the development of digital competence. This task also lets work students’ language skills and brings a different and a fun way to present content; this kind of activities can motivate students. Besides, this task can assume different roles and make decisions taking into account different perspectives and characteristics of inventing a character.

In this sense, I remember when I was a twelve years old our language teacher gave us the beginning of a story and we had to end up it in the way we desired. Other times he gave us the end of a story and we had to invent just the beginning of it. It was fantastic because the teacher promoted our imagination when doing this kind of activities.

To sum up, I think this sort of activities are very nice to do with children because they involve their creativity since they have to create a character and they have to think about the role whose fairy tale character is going to invent. So I encourage you to let children to involve their imagination because it is a very important section which is worth to be developed.

See you in the next post m8s

About education law

The Education, Culture and Sports Minister Wert has promoted a law which shows many reforms in education. Here we can find some of the characteristics which refer to Lomce (Ley orgánica para la mejora educativa) which was endorsed by the Council of Ministers.

The subjects in primary and high school are grouped into trunks, specific and regional free configuration. The Government will determine the content and the minimum trunks hours (such as Spanish Language, Mathematics, Science or Foreign Language). Communities will set the curriculum of specific assessment criteria (such as physical education or music). Furthermore, the subject ‘conocimiento del medio natural, social y cultural’ will be divided into natural science and social science as it was long time ago.

On the other hand, the Government will advance the private school money to families who want their children to be taught in “Castellano” and then it will be discounted to Cataluña, to guarantee parents’ rights to choose the language in which their children study in autonomous communities which have a co-official language.

Another important change is highly related to school board, it keeps on being the government of public and aided schools but it loses powers like approval of the budget, educative projects or admission of pupils’ processes. And from now on, state schools will not be able to choose the headmaster, who will be elected by the administration.

The government deletes the selectivity and introduces external national assessment of basic skills for all students at the end of compulsory secondary education (ESO) and high school, who will overcome in order to achieve a degree. According to primary education, every student will be submitted for early detection of learning difficulties to finish third and other one at the end of stage (sixth grade), defined by the CCAA. Moreover, at the end of the fourth course of ESO, there will be an external individualized assessment of bachillerato or FP, so students will have to pass it in order to get the title and be able to access to bachelor. In that sense, bachillerato will have the modalities of science, humanities, social sciences and arts. The final evaluation will be used to obtain a bachillerato certificate, which will allow students to access to university education, although universities may convene additionally specific tests.

In my opinion, some of the changes could be successful ideas but the problem is that we care continuously changing our education laws and this is not good for our education system. Moreover, politicians do not take into account teachers’ opinions and experience and I think they are so important to get a better education. Finally, from my point of view, what I really miss is the incorporation of history of art in some periods of primary education because it is necessary for children to have knowledge about its importance in our culture.