Primary
International Gestures in Primary Education
Elementary schools can use international gestures in a large number of activities. Students use their body to convey meaning in a very natural way, which is complementary to the word.
Even in their early school years they can learn to make and understand hand gestures. The following experiment was carried out in a primary school in Bande (Ourense) in 1996 with boys and girls from 4 to 6 years old. During a two-hour session, they first enjoyed a Senegalese story in which the main characters were a pair of rabbits and a horse.
They later learned to make the signs of the four elements (earth, water, air, and fire). These items are represented by drawings placed on the four walls and the children tried to order their classmates to move to different parts of the classroom only with gestures. The session ended with a song.
On this same occasion, students were able to learn to greet in five different languages with the help of a song by Fernando Fernández Picos.
Students can also use gestures to facilitate presentations at school festivals, where signs add value to expression and communication.
We can see the videos of several activities that took place in the CEIP Fermín Bouza Brey of Ponteareas (Pontevedra) during the years 2000 and 2001:
New Year Festival
Students express their wishes for the new year 2000
The four seasons
Poem by the Galician writer Antón García Teijeiro. We can see a fragment dedicated to Autumn.
Children's Rights
Students represent Human Rights in their children’s version.
A very interesting experience took place at CEIP Nª Srª de la Sierra, in Cabra, Andalusia, Spain, in 2009.
Students had to add international gestures by themselves to certain texts about peace, with the sole help of the website www.yogote.net, where they had to find the dictionary, select the signs of the chosen words and make a presentation. with gestures and text. The results can be seen in the following video:
If we bring together primary and secondary school students, the latter can use international gestures to teach their younger colleagues some expressions in a language they are learning on their own.
International gestures, in this case, act as an effective and versatile teaching tool, as can be seen in these videos that were made at the Galician meeting of UNESCO-ASP schools in 2012:
