This week in OsloMet we had several different lectures, most of them introductory to the subject of Aesthetics and Special Needs. Beginning with Tuesday we analyzed the term “literature”, what it means from different perspectives and how it can be used as a tool for reaching out to children with special needs. The characters in the stories don’t have to be only a mirror for someone to relate to but they can also act as a window to see things from a different light or to open up to another world completely. After this lesson we continued with some theoretical background from the department of psychology (ex. Freud on superego-id-ego, attachment theory etc.) and worked on deconstructing plot and story elements from the fairy tale of “The Seven Foals”.  The next day we attended a lecture for a first look regarding the spectrum of special needs and also discussed about inclusive education and the dangers of assigning labels to kids from a very young age. On Thursday the topic was Norwegian educational systems and more specifically Norwegian kindergartens and schools. The first half focused on the philosophy behind the way education is structured in Norway and the second provided historical information on the educational system here. At the end of the week we visited the Folk Museum where we were given a tour of the houses and traditions on medieval Norway.

This week has been an introduction of the course.

On Tuesday we talked about what is literature and the aims of it. One interesting thing I never thought about was that literature is different depending on who you ask. Another thing I had never heard about was a tory “Aesop and his fellow servants” so this day I learn lot of new things.

On Wednesday the lecture was about the inclusive education and about some theorists who supported natural environment.

On Thursday we learn about Norwegian schools and kindergartens. I learn new things about the Sami education, I was very curious about it. We had some discussions too this day, about our own experiences in school and we talked about it in groups.

And the last day was the excursion to the Folk Museum, a guide explained to us things about the medieval houses and traditions of the Norwegian people, in my opinion it was very interesting.

During this week of lectures, we attended lectures with an array of different themes. Most of these were introductory lectures in order for us to understand the course and the themes better.

On Tuesday, we analysed what literature is, and what it means to different people. We also learned how it can be used to help/teach children with different special needs. One thing I took home from this lecture was that 'adults define what children's literature is', and that 'children also make literature'. The second lecture on Tuesday was about psychology and some theoretical background. The thing I took from this lecture was how 'we identify with one or more of the literary characters in a text'.

On Wednesday, we had a lecture about a background of certain special needs (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dyscalculia). The thing I took with me most from this lecture was the dangers of 'labelling children too soon'.

On Thursday we attended a lecture about Norwegian kindergartens and how they're organised/the system. We also got information about the primary and secondary school systems.

On Friday, there was a tour at the Norsk Folkemuseum, which I unfortunately couldn't go to due to sickness.

On Tuesday, we had our first day of music lessons. We talked about how 'music therapy' can help children with (specifically) Autism Spectrum Disorder, we made music with 'everyday' objects, and we simply had a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, we had our second day of music lessons, where we continued with the songs we learnt on Tuesday. We also wrote 'social stories' (see the file attached to this post for the one I made with Kim and Kaat). It was a very educational experience to see how we would create a social story for a child with (in our case) a fear of failure. I personally really liked these two days of 'music lectures', but I am kind of unsure how I would use the newly acquired knowledge in my future English lessons.

On Thursday, we started with a lecture about Literature and Disabilities. We mostly talked about Critical Disability Studies ('involves scrutinizing not bodily or mental impairments but the social norms that define particular attributes as impairments, as well as the social conditions that concentrate stigmatised attributes in particular populations'), and we took a look at 'Literature of the Different' (e.g. Frankenstein, Don Quixote). The second lecture was a lecture in which we had to figure out a way to 'change our workplace' so it would be accessible to a child with cerebral palsy. The assignment itself went very smoothly, but at the end we discovered that none of the three groups added 'teamwork' in their 'solutions' (teamwork being that all the parties work together). This was also what I took home from this day: we can not simply do something this drastic by ourselves, we need help.

On Tuesday, we recorded the story and edited it.

To end the week we went cross-country skiing, it was a very fun day and one in which I learned about a sport that I had never done before.

The theory lecture was about heroes. We discussed about different cases of heroes -like the ironic and tragic ones- and gave some examples of them from different cultures. We also talked about monsters: the reasons they exist and how to deal with them, and also mentioned the seven deadly sins. There was also a reference to Axel Olrik on children's storytelling.

In the assignment part I collaborated with Indie, Brechte, Lucia and Ezdehar to create a story of friendship, heroes and adventure, while also diving on the difficulties "different" people face. We recorded both the script we wrote and also the backround music for it, and we played it on Thursday for the rest of the class.

Some of the theory included Bruner's three ways to communicate/design one's own narration, which are the visual, the aural/auditory and the kinaesthetic. During the week we also took lots of notes of improvement that derived from our own, presented works. Some of those include: pauses, wait for the audience to wonder with you, look them in the eye. Be mindful of what type of audience you have (on special needs you need to think how much information they can take or if we're going to confuse them). We can also use visual representation to help with the understanding (drawings, pictures, etc.) and for the audience to better remember what has been told/showed (see the multisensory approach). Another thing could be to ask the audience to do specific sounds etc, to be interactive. They do it three times within the story to learn and repeat. We create an experience.

‌become part of the role. Last but not least is to not be afraid to change between being the narrator and the character.

Another piece of useful theory were the "brotherhoods", according to which we can relate a specific story with a specific group of people that would appreciate it more, find themselves in it. We can look for brotherhood's with the sentence "name of the story" is for all those who..., and complete the sentence with what we find fitting.

For the week's project we were assigned to create an oral storytelling performance with a group of people. I worked with Gloria from this group and two other Spanish girls and we did our own version of the children's book "The three little wolves and the big bad pit" by Eugenios Trivizas. We performed it in front of the whole class and got useful feedback from it.

Tuesday and Wednesday we had music sessions, the first one we talked about music therapy and how it could help children with special needs, she told and explained us lot of ways and stories she experienced, it was so interesting. We did activities with objects and we made a story making sounds with them. The next day we wrote social stories (I attached mine with Lucia and Lara)

This sessions I found them very interesting and personally I learnt lot of things of them and of the activities and stories.

The last day, Thursday started with a lecture of literature and disabilities. Then we had an assignment in which we had to adapt an excursion to be accessible to a child with cerebral palsy. I personally enjoyed this activity, we have to take in consideration lot of things and be careful with everything. We present our assignments and none of us did it the right way because we didn’t take in consideration the other groups.

Then the teacher gave us a story about a scarecrow, we had to read it and we choose the perspective of the scarecrow, so we had to change some parts to adapt to the perspective. After we present our story and we saw the stories of the rest.

On Tuesday we started with some games to know more the people of the class, for example throwing a ball to other person and saying their names.

Then we started to improvise stories, so we practiced for the whole day improvisation and more ways of storytelling, it was useful and funny. They were interesting activities. And then we had to prepare a storytelling for Thursday in groups.

Wednesday we were making the storytelling for Thursday.

Finally, Thursday we presented our storytelling, I worked with Naya, and Lara and Lucia. Our storytelling was inspired by “The three little wolves and the Big Bad Pig” a brilliant inversion of characters, this time, the evil one is a ferocious pig who huffs and puffs until he knocks down the houses of the three little wolves. We had so much fun doing it and the class enjoyed our performance, we received feedback from the teacher and the class.

On Tuesday we finished our big puppet, and we presented it to the rest of the class.

Then we did like a coup or dish with clay, we used a lot our hands and different tools. Then we painted it as we wanted with different colors, this was a little bit difficult and frustrating because sometimes we didn’t get what we expected.

After this we went all together to the “Casa Dei Bambini Montessori barnehage”. One teacher explained us everything and showed us how that worked with the kids and how they managed to have everything under control. For me it was a little bit shocked because I didn’t imagine kids cooking or cutting things on their own. I loved the school, and I enjoyed a lot seeing new things and new ways of doing things.

On Wednesday we went to HUK, Bygdø, to a forest and a beach, It was very beautiful. There we made different activities related to the nature and searching for new objects or things we didn’t know the name of. We found shells, mussels, moss, plastics… and for example I did a collection of shells, different colors, sizes… It was an interesting day with the activities, the only bad thing it was that was very cold.

On Thursday we had to present a short stop-motion video. We make it and then we present it to the class, all of them were funny and entertaining. That day we did “people” of paper. We made big puppets with large piece of paper, we spend time making more than one and then we did a performance with them, as if we were them.

The last day we did an excursion to a nature kindergarten, Småtjern.

In this school children spend their days outdoors playing and learning, offer a refreshing departure from traditional classroom settings.

One of the most striking aspects of nature schools is the freedom they afford children. Instead of being confined within four walls, they roam through forests, fields, and streams, exploring the wonders of the natural world. This freedom allows for spontaneous discoveries and encourages curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Whether building forts, identifying plants, or observing wildlife, every activity becomes a lesson rich with possibilities. They also promote physical activity and holistic well-being. Instead of sitting at desks for hours on end, children are constantly on the move, climbing trees, balancing on logs, and navigating uneven terrain.

In essence, outdoor schools offer a holistic approach to education that prioritizes experiential learning, environmental stewardship, and the well-being of the whole child. By embracing the great outdoors as their classroom, these schools empower children to become curious, compassionate, and responsible global citizens.

I upload a collage of the week that has pictures of the different things we did and I talked about.

The first part of the week we made puppets from scratch. Toona guided us and we filled in stockings with a soft material, sewed on eyes, hair and created outfits. Most of us attached a wooden hand to enhance movement. After working on them for a couple of days we presented them in class and talked a little about them as characters.

The second part was led by Kostas, who encouraged us to work on basic puppet movement in two types of puppets. We focused on small but believable scenes and, in teams, we made a small play we presented and later on talked about. The next day we were tasked to create actual characters out of our puppets. That included having a name for it, aspirations, fears, hobbies, friends etc. The interesting and educating thing about the whole process was that these different puppets could be used for addressing certain issues a regular child or even special needs child might face. By putting certain characteristics in a puppet we're able to present and discover solutions about problems one might face. For example an alien puppet could work as a metaphor for children refugees who are away from home, don't know the language well and feel quite literally "alienated" from their surroundings. After creating those characters we split again into teams of three people and created a 10-15 minute story with each of our characters. We had to find how they could relate to one another or help eachother as well. Very important part of the task was to also include interactions with the viewers of the puppet play; have them reply to questions or even participate in the build up of the story. On Friday we performed these stories and talked about things we did right and things that could be improved.

My puppet was an alien named Vinnie and when making it I looked it from a different perspective than that of a refugee child. For me it was a person different from the others, socially mostly, that despite their difficulties tried to get along with the rest of the humans and learn their ways. This alien could be from a mute child to an autistic adult and everything in between. The important thing was the motivation to learn from everyone else and try to get along despite the differences or feelings of fear that one may have had; whether from the alien towards the humans or the humans towards the alien.

We saw a home-made movie of kids in a school, they were doing different activities, playing games in team, for example “who is the leader?” and after we were talking about how that games would help and improve skills in the kids.

The other half of the day we were in the gym doing activities as the kids, we did team and pair activities, it was fun and interesting.

On Tuesday was creative writing, she told us some theoty and then we started doing differents excercises as a practice, we had to write 10 sentences about ourselfs, we had to write the first thing that came to our minds when we think about something.

We also writted this as a metaphor; "A child with Down syndrome is like a sunny day because they radiate a unique and special light that illuminates the world around them. Their smile is like a ray of sunshine that dissipates the clouds of ignorance and prejudice, filling hearts with warmth and joy. Although they may face unique challenges, their radiance is constant, reminding us that even in the midst of adversity, beauty and happiness can shine brightly."

This day we also built a character, we had to go to a public place to observe a person in concret a create a character about their person. Then we did a whole story mixing the character from before and a painting.

Today the class was about perceiving differently and shared readings. The professor talked about what is shared readings and explained to us. Then he gave us 2 poems, the first was in Norsk and in English, and the second was in Norwegian and English. He read both twice in each language. I liked a lot how he read it in Norwegian, I’ve never listened to a poem in Norwegian and it was very nice. After, we talked about what we thought the poem was trying to say and different ways of interpretation. I love poems so I enjoyed this class.

Then we had the fantastic literature class. We had a lecture about it; Fantastic literature, encompasses a wide range of imaginative storytelling that often incorporates elements of the supernatural, mythical creatures, magical realms, and otherworldly phenomena. In this class, we delve into the key characteristics, themes, and notable works within this captivating genre.

Then we saw a movie "The Fall of the House of Usher," based on Edgar Allan Poe's renowned tale, delves into themes of madness, isolation, and the ominous power of the past. Set within the decaying mansion of the Usher family, the film unravels a tale of psychological horror and Gothic atmosphere.