Hello classmates!!
In this post I am going to talk about the activity we carried out the last Monday at class. This one was related to a previous one in which we had to learn by heart one specific poem and then record ourselves by performing it. Therefore, the activity we did at class was an enjoyable way of putting into practice “how to recycle previous activities”.
To begin with, the teacher asked us to look for the video we recorded the previous time in internet. Then, we had to choose one of the videos our classmates produced in order to start working on and finally, we had to design one task related to that video in order to make students participate by interacting with the video.
The poem we selected talked about anything that you can collect anywhere. Because of that, we designed an activity in which children had to create three different verses about anything that they can collect anywhere and add them to the poem. This way they have a clear grammar scaffolding, but also they can use their imagination and to feel themselves as great poets.
In my opinion, these type of activities are very creative and fun for children. You can forget about teaching them poetry only by introducing them well known writers or make them learning by heart one specific poem and recite it in front of the class. These type of strategies are a little bit strict and bored. With these last you don’t offer them the opportunity of make them reflect on what writers are inspired of when they create, or what kind of feeling they usually manage at the end, when they publish poems. However, if you sometimes make them put in some poet shoes and ask them to create something new, a current adaptation of a Becquer poem or to stick images around a poem in order to provide a visual support of what they understand, they can realize of the great work a “simple” poem takes and the meaning it could has for them, then for humanity. Moreover, it is recycled, so you can get the most of previous tasks to realise new ones. You have not to think too much.
Lastly, our future pupils are mainly children. They don’t understand about learning by heart or reciting but they know how to play, so why don’t let them play? The use of these type of strategies could mean a different and a better way of learning in which children could explore, evaluate their possibilities and create something fresh.
Thanks, Carmen. I consider that learning by heart is a good strategy too, and we need to help students develop their mnemonic techniques. However, if poetry is always introduced in the same way, they will think that’s the normal thing to do with poems. It’s a pity!
Hello Raquel,
You are absolutely right. Of course we have to make our students practice learning by heart and offer them a variety of mnemonic techniques in order to train their brains, but the problem at this point, as you said, is that learning by heart has become a bored routine in schools today. At least it was a bored topic in my times.
Nowadays, it is implementing new useful techniques and resources that convert classes into something more dynamic and cooperative among the pupils. However, there is not a clear schema of how to do it. Some teachers want to try new ways of teaching but sometimes they don’t know what to do or how to carry this out in class.
For that reason it is important to update ourselves. As you well said Raquel, we can manage memorization and saying poems aloud but also it is important to consider other options, such as creating a poem or performing it, we also can ask them what the poem inspire them, or what they think is the poem talk about, etc. In my opinion, I think that “playing” with poems will offer pupils the opportunity to consider them been inside their memories for a long time and not only for the exam. May be they don’t remember which one says what, but they will keep them as something good that they learnt in school.