Estrategias de marketing

Session One

At the beginning, I told the children there was a beautiful garden which belonged to a giant, containing many beautiful and magical things. I then encouraged them to think of what these beautiful things might be. However, when I did this with the first group of children, they tended to think only as if it was a park, quite similar to the one in their community; thus, in my research group, I demonstrated first, telling them something magical that might not exist in the real world but that did exist in the giant’s garden. My aim was to encourage them to use their imaginations, stretching their ideas and, hence, their language. I then asked them to describe these things in detail. Here we spent quite some time building up our garden. Later, the children mimed what they had contributed and described this in groups. They also had the chance to play with other groups, to feel how happy the children in the story were when they played in the garden. I hoped in this way the children might experience this happiness physically and emo- tionally. This activity also framed the context of our story and was presented as a pre- text for the dramatic problem. When the Giant came back, he forbade the children from playing there and the group were encouraged to use polite phrases to ask his permission

to return. They also decided on presents which might make the giant happy and change his mind. At the end of this session, they were asked to describe what they thought of the giant and his decision. Besides using oral language, they also worked in pairs to sculpt the giant when he looked at the closed gate, showing his attitudes and feelings at the moment of banishing the children. This activity allowed the young children to share what they thought with their limited language ability.

Session Two

This session started with a meeting with the giant. I was in role as the giant and showed my ungrateful attitude to their imaginary presents. When out of role, as a teacher, I asked them what they thought about the giant and his responses, and wrote these judg- ments down on the white board. The children were also encouraged to think of ques- tions to ask the giant to find out why he did not like their presents; why he did not allow children to play in his garden; why he was so grumpy and so on. When in role again, my intention was to challenge them: for example, I asked them why should I share my garden? Why should I make friends with people I didn’t know? In the next activity, we discussed the giant’s responses and mapped out his profile in detail. The children could see how many words we used to describe a person through our understanding, step by step. The strategy of teacher in role attempted to emotionally engage the children to talk to the giant directly by demonstrating a clear manner and mood. I hoped also to see how this emotional engagement impacted on the children’s understanding of his char- acter and his actions. After this, we created the terrible wall that the giant built to keep the children away, and added sound and movement to make it dramatic and physical. The children then worked in pairs to make a sculpture of the giant, showing his feelings as he looked at this completed wall. At the end of the session, we discussed why some people did not like sharing and kept others away. I wanted to explore the children’s understanding of selfishness rather than simply discuss whether selfishness was right or wrong.

Session Three

In session three we created the winter garden, which was very cold and full of wind, rain and snow. I spent a long time here encouraging the children to use their voices and create group still images to depict the situation. By comparing these images with those of the garden at the beginning of the drama, I asked them what the giant’s feelings

would be when he saw his garden now. The children were encouraged to show their understanding here through oral language and also physicalisation. I hoped to create some sympathy for the giant, to provoke some human ambiguity rather than moral judgements. Whether they could have emotional engagement and connection with him was a key point, as I felt that children know and feel selfish attitudes themselves at times. At the end of the session, I wrote down what they had to say about the giant at this point in the drama. They were also encouraged to perform the drama activity of sculpturing to show me how the Giant looked at his garden, then to describe all the sculptures.

Session Four

The final session concentrated on the happiness that sharing can bring, rather than the tricky idea of redemption. Because of cultural differences, I did not mention the Christ child or Christian ideas in my teaching. I told the rest of the story with background music, then had the children make still images in groups to show how the giant played with the children and had lots of fun with them once he had seen the error of his ways and invited them back into his garden. I then reminded them of the group images we had done so far: when the children played in the garden when giant was away; the winter garden full of wind, rain and snow; when the giant opened his garden again and played with the children. I encouraged the children to tell the whole story according to their drama experience. At the end of the session, the giant died peacefully; I placed white cloth in the middle of the classroom, which represents death in Chinese culture, then invited the children to say last words to him and to think about what they would like to give him as a final present. Death is rarely mentioned in Chinese kindergartens and so I also wanted to know the teacher’s response to this topic.