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FIRST SESSION PRESENTATION BY HAMISH BINNS

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Imagine

  This activity consists of creating a kind of small ukelele in order to use it with the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. The instrument will be made using a jar cover and some strings using wool. The song "Imagine" is used in class to deal with stress with students of 2ºESO. We listen to the song and students (with their own ukeleles) follow stress with the strings (the teacher shows how to do it first). Then, we can create a Speaking activity using the topic of the lyrics. A follow-up activity can be for students to choose a song, give the stress with the ukelele strings and the rest of students guess the song. Remedios Gómez Pérez

Scottish bagpipes

The activity starts with a story about the Glencoe massacre which has a lot of elements to attract the students attention. The story will include historic elements but also the legend according to which on the morning of the infamous day a bagpipes tune was played to warn the MacDonald's that slaughter was upon them. The second part of the activity will be to make a bagpipe with a latex glove, then create and play a very short tune that could be a sign of warning and decide what it would be trying to warn about (e.g. teacher, you need to move on, you are repeating yourself). And to end the activity we will have a look at some Scottish words: lass, wee, kilt, tartan, aye… and practice the Scottish accent (tapped R, the ooh sound…). They will have to listen to and then read a text with those words and sounds. Purificación Almansa

The Digeridoo

  To get to know a little bit of Australian aboriginal culture, I would introduce my students to the Dreamtime story of the didgeridoo, and this way they learn about the mythology and the typical instruments of native people from Australia. They read the story of how the didgeridoo was created, and then they will be given the instructions of how to create one themselves. You can read the story of the didgeridoo on the following web page: https://www.kullillaart.com.au/dreamtime-stories/The-Boomerang And you can learn how to make a didgeridoo here: https://kinderart.com/art-lessons/multic/make-a-didgeridoo/ It will be an interesting approach for secondary school students, especially first or second year of ESO ones to Australian culture, which is quite unknown for them. Almudena Sánchez Rodríguez

African legend

  The activity I have chosen is to create a drum that is related to an old african legend about monkeys. An old African legend tells that hundreds of years ago, in those lands, monkeys used to spend hours gazing at the moon. They would gather in the evenings when the sky was clear and would be stunned by its beauty. They could go for hours without blinking, fascinated by such beauty. They often commented that if it was so beautiful seen from afar, it must be even more spectacular up close. One day they decided by consensus that, to see for themselves, they would travel to it. As the monkeys do not have wings, their only option was to climb on top of each other to form a long tower. The strongest stayed at the bottom and the weakest climbed nimbly, until they formed a huge column of monkeys. The tower seemed solid, but it turned out not to be so. It was too high and those at the base found their strength failing. As a result, it began to wobble and collapsed. Thousands of monkeys fel

The boy who harnessed the Wind.

  The story of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (by William Kamkwamba) is perfect and ideal for use in my Geography class (3rd Year of ESO). It helps us to explain concepts such as low-tech versus hi-tech, appropriate technology and wind energy as a renewable energy. To reinforce the story, we have built a pan flute/syrinx that would try to imitate the wind and castanets that would reproduce the sound of the metal parts of the windmill. Adapted Story (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind) William is a poor schoolboy from a village in Malawi. The country is devastated by famine and drought. The government does very little or nothing. The crops also fail, so people have to sell their properties to survive, and many try to leave to escape the drought. William and his friend Geoffrey realise that one of the main problems in the village is the lack of electricity, without which people can neither power their homes nor pump water to grow their crops. So, they come up with a plan to use simple tech

Legend of the Philippines.

  To start with I would display a photo of a famous legend of the Philippines. Their task would be acting up their guesses about the two main characters and what coul've happened in small groups. Secondly I'd give them instructions to create a kazoo, which is an American musical instrument that adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. Luckily, it's not that hard to make one—you can make a simple kazoo out of a comb or toilet paper roll, or a more complicated one out of wood!. Then I would give them the story cut into pieces so that they could join them and get to the end Finally they would write up a poem from a few words of the legend that we would include in the initial image. Mª Jesús Walias

The violinist

  I would tell the story about a violinist. A middle-aged, dirty and smelly man was playing the violin. He didn´t play very well. On the floor ,next to him, there was an open box in order to get coins from people who were walking over there, but the box was empty. He tried hard to play a nice melody, but he couldn´t. His violin was out of tune. You couldn´t identify his songs. A famous musician was walking along with his wife and they met the beggar .The musician asked the beggar if he could lend him his violin for a second,; the beggar looked at him in a very strange way. Maybe the beggar thought he wouldn´t give it back but the soloist fined tune and started to play the violin in a nice way. People started to put money in the beggar´s box. Not only coins but also bills. The box was full with money. The beggar felt happy. Now he could recognise the tune of his old violin. After that, the beggar started to play and the music was really nice. From now on, he would earn his life with hi