Hello everyone! In my fourth post I want to write about poetry because I am sure that almost until now, most of us didn’t think so much about it.
First of all, I want to start with a question: do you think that it is possible be a good poetry performance? Well, in my case, I have been thinking about it during this week and of course it is possible but it is not easy. When we were in class last week, I saw one video that made me think a lot. In the video we could see some tips to follow and could be a good poetry performance. The tips were:
- Score your poem: This means that we have to think carefully with which poem we want to work in order to highlight the words that we want to emphasize and think everything that should be related with the word, for example the gestures. If we chose easy poems will be easier for us and it doesn’t mean that it will be a bad task.
- Find you pace: It is also important think about in which poem are we going to work and decide the pauses that are better for us, because not always a line break gives you the pause. So we have to practice it many times to know which way is the best one to carry on.
- Good diction: This part it is related with the pronunciation, because as we know a good pronunciation it is very important, especially if we are working with children and in a different language. A good tip to achieve this point is avoided gobbling.
- Natural movements: If we want to performance a poem in a correct way, we should be careful with the movements that we made, because sometimes we tend to exaggerate them and it doesn’t fit. The best way is keep it simple and keep it natural.
- Natural and have fun: The last tip was that when we have all the previous steps, we just have to have fun during the performance because it is the best way to do it well.
So, what do you think after reading all the tips? Do you think that it is possible? Well, after see the video and do some activities, we worked with a poem, we performance it and I have to say that it is not as simple as it seem.
I was looking for the link with the video but I couldn’t find it, so you can start seeing the 5 tips video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cca7SRzsbBw and if I find the video that we made I will share it with you.
Enjoy it!
Hello Nerea!!
Thanks for sharing. I have found these tips very useful and I totally agree with them. But, for example pronunciation, diction, pauses… and these aspects to take into account are very important but I think the most important thing is to have fun doing it. In my opinion when you are enjoying something you get a better result that if you don’t like or you are doing it forced. So I would say that, if we are going to do something related with a poetry performance, we have to own the poem, to rehearse it to make it more attractive for our students in order to engage them with poetry. But, as you mentioned before in the tips, we have to take into account that it has to seem natural.
Now I would like to write some other ideas we have been working on in class when we are dealing with poetry and children, for example it is very important to create an environment that makes the students feel confident, also doing actions and gestures with the poems, give them the opportunity to work in pairs or groups or give them the chance to express whatever they want a feeling, a story…
In my opinion poetry has a lot of benefits and doing performances with poems are a good way to engage students with it. So thanks for sharing these tips to make it better!