PIRATES, RABBITS & ELVES

"Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be."

-David Thornburg

by Silvina P. Hillar

Children are to be attracted to whatever means adventure to them. So taking this into account we should bear it in mind when planning an initial project in order to motivate them for the rest of the year.

In my opinion, an initial project can be a further step towards loving the subject; or not!

As regards pirates, well known characters pirates are to be taken into account to work with. Worthless to mention, you should know which ones to work with according to students' age.

Pirates are to be hooked with anything that comes to your mind, for instance rabbits or any other forest animal that students feel attracted to. In this case, rabbits were to be chosen. Why?

I came across The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter. It can be read and combined with a set of videos appealing to children as follows:

"WHAT ELSE CAN I DO? I'M OUT OF IDEAS!" These thoughts belong to a desperate teacher who wants something new for students. If only did I meet an elf ...
"THAT'S IT! Elves are in the forest where the pirates landed and Peter Rabbit lives, so that's the spicy element in our project AN ELF".
Bearing in mind that March 17th is St Patrick's day we can teach students who a leprechaun is.
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) activities are essential to any bilingual education. So, that's it. We teach not only about leprechauns but also about Irish traditional elements such as: rainbows, golden coins, pots and so on.
Furthermore, in the case that we are preparing students for an international exam such as Cambridge YLE we focus on part 1 vocabulary.
Everything can be combined taking into account a little bit of imagination granted by an elf.