Narrating with symbols

Both the students and the teachers from the CRA Alto Cidacos school in Arnedillo (La Rioja) who participate in the project “Talking pictures” clearly understand what collaborative work is, and they have shown this to us with this original international narration, which also serves to introduce the students to road safety education.

The project in which schools from Iceland and Poland also participate and which started last November is now in its last stages. Its aim has been to introduce the students to the similarities and differences among the three countries, focussing each month on a different topic.

Road signals have been the topic which has occupied the month of February. This carefully planned activity, began with an excursion out of the school to “hunt down and capture” the signs. An authentic field trip in which the children have learned to interpret signs as diverse as those of “glen”, “snow” and “hospital”, among others. Like little reporters, the students went through the streets of the towns in the valley of Cidacos where they live: Herce, Arnedillo, Enciso and Préjano, camera in hand, detecting and photographing all types of traffic signs and signs on shops and private estates. The students from the partner schools have developed their detective skills to try to locate similar symbols in their respective countries, something which was not always possible given the differences among the three countries. From these excursions in which teachers and parents have participated, came the necessary raw materials for the story.

With the idea of increasing the collaboration, the signs chosen by the Polish students were used by the Spanish students to begin the narration, which the Icelanders continued with the signs contributed by the Spanish students, among which the sign which identifies dinosaur remains stands out, given that a peculiarity of this area of La Rioja is that it is rich in cretaceous deposits. The story was well rounded off by the Polish partners making use of the signs they were given by the Icelandic students, completing a story full of adventures which is a wonderful example of their use of imagination. In total each country contributed eight signs, so that there was a battery of twenty-four of these symbols. In the classroom the Spanish students began by writing the fragments of the story, first of all in Spanish, illustrating them with signs cut out from paper. This planning on paper was what they subsequently used to rewrite the story on the computer. Using a universal iconic language, the students have brought all their imagination into play in a story which talks of bicycles, airplanes, storms, herds of animals, dinosaurs … Read it in  project blog.

The story finishes with a play activity which is a game, using the Photopeach tool, in which you have to guess in which of the three partner countries you can find a series of signs. In short an original way to work on linguistic, artistic, and digital competences as well as interaction with the physical, social and civic world … and to learn having fun.

Source of the images: the 'Talking pictures' project.