Aprendizaje Servicio a través de la asignatura de Literatura Infantil

Abstract

During the 2012/13 course, the teachers of the subject Children’s literature, studied in the 4th course of the Degree in Primary education had a worry: we not only wanted to train our students with aspects related to Children’s literature, but also to teach them through methodologies that help students because they are human, For this reason, the use of Service learning was perfect for this objective. Service learning is, according to Batllé (2011, 51), “a methodology …based on active pedagogies and compatible with other educational strategies…that help students learn to be competent by being useful to others”. Through an activity, we tried to join this subject (and the university in our city) with society, more specifically with a residence for the elderly. This is what Service learning has to do: “ a project…in which the participants are trained when they work with the real needs of the environment with the objective of improving it” (Puig y Palos, 2006, 61). The link was poetry. The activity was called Intergenerational Poetry Festival. The students prepared different poems, songs (we had some students from the Musical Education specialization) and other texts form the oral tradition. The elderly people were very happy about the activity, and they also prepared different songs, poems, etc. one afternoon they shared moments and experiences, and the result was very positive, both for the students and for the elderly people. The students could put into practice what they had studied in the class in a more social way. So, we could teach using this new methodology.