Where is Superman?

Let your students play games and make creative activities to develop their imagination and have a fun learning process. I designed a game where kids have to talk in a radioshow giving clues about where Superman was. They have a list of all the places so when they finish, the one that was missed to be mentioned is the place where Superman is. I am going to embed one clue as an example of the game and the news I recorded with my own voice. I had to upload to Spreaker the Superman theme that curiously was composed also by John Williams. This is an easy activity that you can make with Audacity or online in the website www.spreaker.com. This task improves the speaking skills and is very funny for them. 

As you know, Superman flies so quickly, even faster than the light, and for that reason he can stay in a lot of places in a few minutes. You are going to divide into groups and each group will have a clue about where Superman was. Turn on the microphone and record the news so your classmates can listen it later on. Find out where is he now listening the clues that your partners are going to tell you! The place that is not mentioned is the one where he is. Don't worry, each group have only a piece of information so all of you start with the same advantages. Good luck!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i64hnaucb8w9fxd/El_show_de_Arantxa_M_llara_Terceiro_The_Superman_Clues_Show.mp3

75 Years With Superman

This year is the 75th aniversary of our well-known hero of all the times, Superman. To celebrate it, you can make some funny activities with your students related to the environment and Geography. I am going to explain and develop some of them aimed at Primary Education:

To introduce the lesson, I created a talking character with the face of Superman. If you want to make one, you have to go to www.oddcast.com, register and then upload photos or use others of the website and create your own.

Curiosities for the Fans of the Force

Once your students are hooked by the Star Wars Universe, you can comment about some curiosities of the saga to make an interesting close of the unit. One of the most important merits of the films is that George Lucas was a pioneer and visionary of his times, introducing all the fantastic effects mixed with a lot lof topics. The special effects have improved amazingly and nowadays we are used to watch films in high quality with unthinkable effects but, do you know that in the first Star Wars film was only a scene maded by computer?

In addition, the popular sounds like the Dark Vader's breathe was maded with a diver's mask, and the laser swords sound was created by George Lucas with a damaged ventilator.

Reinforce your Force!

To reinforce and consolidate the knowledge of this didactic unit related to Star Wars, I designed some activities with the Smart Notebook. I hope you find my ideas useful and interesting! Thanks for reading. This is an example of the activities I designed:

                                                         

                   

You can see the IWB activities by doing a click here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/al2jd44jz1ajtzg/Star%20Wars.notebook

Let's Get an Oscar!

                                                                                 As a final task, the students can create a short film using the Windows Movie Maker that should be related to the topics they learned before, for example of the statement The end justifies the means, science fiction or something like that. You can celebrate at school an Oscars' Gala and aware prizes for the participants. Learners can also invent an object which doesn't exist and promote it creating and advertising with the same tool. That way you can organise the Gala into different categories.

I made an advertisement, The Penguin Writer, with Animoto in www.animoto.com and the results are very proffesional:

http://animoto.com/play/2a17MashurX68xxP9yq0kg

The Imperial Stormtroopers Invade Compostela!

The May 25th a Star Wars crowd marched around Santiago de Compostela to conmemorate the aniversary of the films and tribute Constantino Romero, who was the spanish voice of Darth Vader. This convention started in 2010 and will take place every year and you can consult the itinerary here:

http://imperialstormtroopers.es/en/

Talking about Geography, you can teach your students about Galicia and Santiago in particular. This place has a great patrimony, like the Cathedral, and you can plan a trip to Santiago to see the convention while learning geography and culture features.

Does the End Justify the Means?

To work with Philosophy, you can explain the ethic theories of Kant and Machiavelli using a piece of this film of Star Wars. Kant distinguished between material ethics and formal ethics; the first one supports that to achieve a certain end, the steps to do it have to be considere with practical reason to achieve what is called The Supreme Good. On the other hand, the formal ethics don't support reflections on means. To this idea is connected the popular statement The end justifies the means. Curiously, it was attributed to Machiavelli because his thinking feeds this theory, but he never affirmed so. Machiavelli worked as an adviser of a prince to help him keep his power and properties.

Once you had explained that, you can put the example of Anakin going to the dark side of the force; he was good but his love was in danger and a bad ambassador misleaded him with the hope to save the woman's life if Anakin learned the dark powers, and that way he did cruel things and became Darth Vader. I made a video with Windows Movie Maker to illustrate the proposal: