Teaching Basic Skills through different types of activities and games

Book editors:
Oksana Nečajeva
Nadezhda Mincheva

Co-authors:
Oksana Nečajeva
Nadezhda Mincheva
Mustafa Balci
Francesca Bergamaschi
Maja Jerman
Annette Weber

Photographs/paintings: Oksana Nečajeva, Nadezhda Mincheva, Mustafa Balci,Francesca Bergamaschi, Maja Jerman, Annette Weber

Funded by: * The “ACQUISITION OF BASIC COMPETENCES – АВС” has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for the information contained in this publication.
All rights reserved
License: CC BY NC

CONTENTS

Preface........................................................................................4

1. Teaching Basic Skills through Drama and Creativity Activities ....................................................................................6

2. Teaching Basic Skills through Collaborative - Cooperative Learning, Music and Buddy Activities...................................................................................22

3. Teaching Basic Skills through Art, Digital Art and Videography .............................................................................35

4. Teaching Basic Skills through Technology and Digital Games........................................................................................49

5. Teaching Basic Skills through Traditional, Board and Contemporary Games........................................................................................64

6. Teaching Basic Skills through Action Indoors and Outdoor ....................................................................................82

SUMMARY

“In order to learn, one must want something, notice something, do something. Without the first, the other three cannot follow”
Spithill

It is widely agreed that motivation has a great effect on students’ capacity to learn. Motivation can be broken down into extrinsic and intrinsic forms. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the learner, who wants to learn for the sake of learning.

Folk wisdom says that “unmotivated students just won’t learn”, that “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. This proverb comes to mind when we see how different various pupils’ attitudes are to learning. For one pupil, learning is personally significant; he is motivated to learning through self-actualization, high achievement motivation, goal orientation, avoidance of failure. For another pupil, learning is a heavy burden which he has to carry and he does not hide boredom, yawning and just waiting for the end of the class. Every teacher faces such situations and in truth is often inclined to blame a pupil for misbehaviour or his inability to learn. But this situation can be understood differently by a teacher who can think critically. It is mostly a sign which reveals if the teaching methods and approaches are effective and relevant to pupils’ needs.

Consequently, extrinsic and intrinsic forms are closely related to each other. Motivated pupil is one who wants to learn, first of all, and who is always interested in learning with the help of the teacher and parents. It is important to provide lessons which keep pupils interested. If the pupils are not interested in the material, it is probable that both pupils and the teacher will end up bored and frustrated. The teacher should show that she/he is interested in the pupils’ opinions and is prepared to adapt her lessons after listening to these opinions. This can have a very positive effect on the atmosphere in the classroom and outside it.

I hear and I forget,
I listen and I remember,
I do and I understand.
(Chinese proverb)

It is truth, that pupils learn any subjects better than they do or experience something themselves. To prove it, the following example can be given: if a learner asked a teacher ‘What is a blind person?’ the teacher might simply reply, ‘A blind person cannot see’, and this would probably satisfy the learner intellectually. But if the teacher replied, ‘Shut your eyes and try to find your pen on the desk in front of you’, she/he would be involving a pupil in the actual experience of being blind. This would satisfy the pupil not only intellectually, but emotionally as well, and possibly inspire in him/her feeling of empathy with all blind people. The pupil would be more likely to remember the meaning of the word as a result of this moment of direct experience.

Teaching Basic Skills through Drama and Creativity Activities

Nadezhda Mincheva
Headmistress of Svetulka kindergarten,
Shumen, Bulgaria

Educational drama is a syncretic model in education that uses the possibilities of art techniques to master knowledge, skills and attitudes. The most distinctive aspect of this pedagogical technology is that it is a holistic process in which the child / student participates and it is a field for the development of potential, creativity, reflection and initiative. The drama-story is a causal sequence and a conflict, a dilemma. In order to perceive the picture of the world, it is necessary to consider the objects, processes and phenomena as existing in time and space. Playing an etude or a play itself requires a stage (space) and development through beginning, development, culmination, denouement and end (time). The whole process resembles the stages of the game. Therefore, the educational drama is close to the child and is successfully applied in kindergarten and school.
Pedagogical interaction is a process that is:
- aimed at achieving a certain expected result,
- related to the overall development of the child / student,
- in which the main participants are the teacher and the child / student (students).
The educational process in kindergarten and school is aimed at the overall development of the child's personality and the acquisition of competencies that are seen as knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for the successful transition of adolescents to the next stage of their lives.

The ultimate goal of any modern educational system is the mastery of basic competencies by children and students. In general, competence is defined as a skill based on knowledge. Dynamic changes worldwide are also changing the focus on some competencies, despite their interconnectedness. For example, in a period of pandemic, digital, language competence, entrepreneurship, civic competence came to the fore due to the way of communication and learning.
The educational drama directly corresponds to the basic competencies. According to the stages of the educational drama, a different set of competencies is mastered. In the stage of "preparation and acting of an etude or play" the child / student uses his / her linguistic and communicative competence, personal competence, cultural awareness. In the stages of "self-reflection", "analysis and evaluation", learning skills and civic competences are clearly outlined. Viewed through the prism of the teaching material, each educational field uses a combination of competencies presented through different techniques and types of theater. For example, mathematical competences and competences in the field of natural sciences can be successfully mastered in kindergarten and primary school through the theater of shadows, pantomime. Language competence is developed through drama, musical theater, theater of imagination, myths and legends. Constructive-technical, pictorial and digital skills are acquired through specific scenography techniques.
The most valuable thing in the use of educational drama is that in the whole process the children / students acquire skills for teamwork, creativity, research, problem solving. All so-called "soft", transferable skills are involved in the child's personal development.

Elements of the educational drama:
Imagination – it resembles the game of young children. It is required to present the final result / product in an imaginary plan before presenting the intermediate stages.
Roles – children and students love to play roles. The role introduces the world through "other people's eyes". The role allows you to experiment.
Action – the development of the plot is related to the sequence of events. For preschoolers and primary school students, time conceptions are the most difficult to understand. The action in the educational drama allows to trace some development for a certain time.
Language – every language is a sign system that has a socio-cultural marker.
Situation – it is a defined spatial framework, in which a fictional action can be played out or it can actually exist for the interaction between the participants.
Time – it is a different segment of historical time.

Basic competencies and techniques for active learning:
Setting goals and ways to achieve them; acquaintance, motivation, visualization.
Getting to know, value orientation, conceptual exchange, learning skills, civic competencies, cultural awareness, entrepreneurship, communicative literacy, personal competence.
Mathematical competence, language competence, digital skills, competence in the field of natural sciences, creativity, problem solving, teamwork, self-assessment, critical thinking.
Language competence, cultural awareness, reflection, cognition, classification.
Digital competencies, visualization, entrepreneurship.
Mathematical competence and such in the field of natural sciences, critical thinking, learning skills.

This correlation does not exhaust all possible options and is conditional, but represents the close connection between the two dependencies.
The different types and genres of theater that present the art techniques of educational drama enable children and students to engage with their strengths and depending on their abilities. Pantomime and shadow theater successfully include children and students with speech development problems, children and students with special educational needs, children and students with emotional and behavioral problems or difficulties in the social sphere. Elements of the pantomime can be used as therapy. In musical theater, children and students by stuttering or replacing sounds, syllables in the word, develop their potential in the musical flow.
Educational drama, in addition to emotional saturation, has other advantages:
·  it makes the child / student a full participant in the learning process;
·  it leads to the achievement of the learning goal, which is interpreted according to the abilities and interests of the child / student;
·  it gives the opportunity to test a life situation, realized and analyzed with drama-techniques, which will prepare the child / student for reaction in real time.
In recent years, the concept of "Resilience" has gained popularity. Given the changing environment, people and societies are required to be resilient in an expanded form - physical, emotional, social, and this is becoming a new competence.
Basic competencies are fundamental, but not limited to the preschool or school period. Upgrading them with the idea of lifelong learning gives a person the opportunity to improve.
This opportunity for personal development is in fact the hallmark of human beings on a planetary dimension.

I present to you a game for preschool children, which can be used very easily and very successfully with primary school students.
It specifically develops mathematical competence for geometric figures and orientation in three-dimensional space and language competence in a native or foreign language (depending on the teacher's educational goals) through Shadow theater.