Nowadays, as everyone can see in media or even as we have already seen in our practicum times, education process needs a change. I ask myself, why do we have the necessity of following text book line by line? Along the degree we have realised of the disadvantages of this methodology. Besides we have learnt a lot of resources in order to be carried out in a class apart from the books which could give better results not only to teachers but also to the real protagonists of the teaching and learning process, students.

Regarding the subject, Children’s literature in English, the fact that kept my attention most was the huge amount of literature resources to be used even in a different class to Spanish language.  Storytelling, stories, theatre, poetry are those general topics we have worked on during this semester. I am really amazed about all the activities, resources or ideas we have learnt related to the previous words. Moreover I am not surprised only about the activities but also about the possibility of connecting them with all the other subjects.

As I have already commented on storytelling, stories, and poetry I would like to highlight the fact of bringing theatre into our classes. You are conscious of all the activities that we were practising last week, and also I would say that all of us were spending a good time during this lesson. For that reason, I am not going to summarise them. I just want to talk about one thought that came to my mind while we were representing Disney character figures. My 3^rd year students are learning the animal kingdoms and I know that memorising them is very boring for them, even more for those who do not like natural sciences. So on Monday I was thinking about using this resource in order to review the contents. For example, asking them to represent an animal from the reptiles’ kingdom and so on. I promise I will do it.

So once we have already finish most of our activities I am looking forward to see the results of the plot summary we are preparing and I am very grateful with all we have learnt during this months. Finally, I hope my post had been useful and interesting for all of you. Thank you for reading them and I have to say that in my opinion you have done a good job!

On Monday, our teacher prepared new activities for us that were linked with poetry. The first activity that we did had a close relation with new technologies. In this activity, first we were divided in small groups of four or three people, then we had to search on YouTube for the poetry videos that we did and choose one of them.
They can be watched in this direction: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrzI70O2odaLe7LN52gX7Q)

After choosing, we had to create a QR code for the video that we had chosen using the website: https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/. Once we had the QR code ready; we started to think about an activity that can be done with the video that we have chosen, such as adding a new strophe or drawing objects that appear or should appear in the poetry, etc. You may think about the purpose of this activity; the aim of the activity was to print the QR codes with the activities suggested and place them in the corridors of the university, so that people could do the activities that we created thanks to their smartphone´s camera.

By the time we finished the activity we started with the next one which was linked with creation, art and visual spatial intelligence. The activity began when the teacher place in different parts of the class some sheets with a poetry in them, but this poetries had a special characteristic; its verses form shapes of objects that were related with them. We had to go read each sheet and create another example using the technique which appears in the sheet.

In conclusion, I have to say that I really liked the activities that we did, because they gave the opportunity to develop imagination and creativity, also they were motivational for us and they would be motivational for children as well, but a very interesting point that the activities suggested is the sense of continuity, I mean that the videos that we did some weeks ago have been used again for another activity. Furthermore, I think that this could be used in some many ways in schools for letting the children create a visible progression in the continuity of the activities that they do.

As a consequence of the previous ideas, if we bear in mind the didactic implications of this conception, some of us have a lack of confidence in teaching poetry.  Because of these reasons, lessons such as the one that we had in the subject Children’s Literature in English, can be quite useful to improve our literature didactic skills.  During the first part of the lesson, we knew some interesting and useful websites to introduce poetry to our future students. And we prepared a poem performance in groups. It was a fantastic approach to know more about teaching and learning poetry.

From then on, I decided to make some research on the teaching of poetry and I found a source that could be useful for us:

The Poetry Trust, according to its official website, is “one of the UK’s flagship poetry organizations, delivering a year-round live and digital program, creative education opportunities, courses, prizes and publications”.

One of the most interesting publications of this organization is  The Poetry Toolkit (foolproof recipes for teaching poetry in the classroom). It is a guide with lots of activities and didactic possibilities that can be applied in the classroom. Besides, this document reflects on how hard it can be for teachers and students to understand poetry. It also encourage teachers to try the proposed activities by themselves, before they use these ones in their work with students. The main aim is that teachers gain an idea of the nature of each task and its possibilities.

An interesting activity designed by Amanda Dalton is Poem Jigsaws (Choosing the right word). To develop this activity, we provide pairs of students with a poem that has been cut up into words that they have to put together again as they want. The aim of the activity is not based on reconstruct the original composition, but to create something new and original. Through this task we help our students to understand some features of poetry such as: word order, syntax and language.

Due to the fact that we, as future teachers, should try these activities, I prepared my own Poem Jigsaw using a sample of the poem A Birthday written by Christina G. Rosetti:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit;

Set of words that belongs to the original poem A Birthday.

Final result: a Poem Jigsaw.

In the described publication there are much more interesting activities that we can use with pupils. I recommend you to read this useful publication and to do other new activities.  

As I said in my previous post, when I think about poetry I just can imagine lists of authors, senseless poems or different periods of the history. This time, Raquel asked us to create our own poems and I am sure you can imagine my feelings after listening that. My group can tell you exactly what I said “I do not have imagination, I cannot do it or I am not good when writing poetry.” However, after finishing the class I went out of there feeling proud of my work.

The teacher asked us to create a poem following different rules. In our case the rules consisted on thinking on an object common in fairy tales and writing a poem with its shape. We chose the Snow-white apple and we started imagining. At first I wrote sentences and words related with the topic but without any sense. I thought I was not going to be able of finishing it on time. However, as time went on ideas where coming to my mind and finally we created a poem which even rhymed.

I wanted to comment on it because we are forming ourselves in order to treat with children. I am sure we all have listen during our practicum times children saying things like “I cannot do it”.  Regarding poetry, which is a very common topic in which most people feel uncomfortable with, we think we have not  enough imagination to create poems. However, as we saw in previous sessions we have a huge amount of resources available for helping our students when writing poetry.

And finally, regarding what I said at the beginning, poetry is not just authors, difficult sentences or memorising without any sense. Even if we work individually or in groups we can create good works, the only essential things would be motivation, relevant topics and a bit of imagination. Don’t you think so?

Hi, Today I’m going to write a post about what we did during the middle group class on Monday. The topic of the class was poetry and the different ways to take advantage of it.

The class can be divided in different parts: In the first part, the teacher gave us some tables that we had to use in groups of three people. To complete the task, we had to open a PowerPoint file, where there was a picture of a map, and touch the different parts of a it which contained a link to a YouTube video. In the videos we heard some teachers speaking about how important are poetry and the diverse ways to approach it.

During the second part of the class, the teacher told us to form new groups of three people as well. Then, we did an activity similar to “the experts group” in which each group was given two websites that were highly linked with poetry. After that, we analyzed them and by the time we had finished we exchange our group partners and each of the new members of each group had to explain their website to the rest. We could use the tablets for this activity.

Finally for the last part of the lesson, we formed new groups of four people and the teacher gave us photocopies of some poetries. Each group had to choose one and then we had to put in practice our storytelling skills to develop choreographies for the poetry, so that children could use it and find poetry motivating and easy to follow. One we had everything planned we were recorded in video while we showed our poetry and its choreography.

In conclusion, this class was a very useful one; it is so because it was very complete. Thanks to it, we first learnt about poetry and how to use it in class; then some resources as websites were provided so that we can find some help, and finally we had the chance to practice what we had learnt during the lesson.

Moreover, the last thing I have to say is that although I like it so much due to the motivational part, I have to say that I would like to know other examples of activities that can be done with poetry at schools.

I hope this message proves interesting for those who like poetry!

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!

On Monday during the middle group we have been working with poetry in class. I am not going to disclose so much information about it considering that the other half group has not taken this lesson yet. However, I decided to highlight some of the main ideas which seem to me that could be very useful if we take them into account when deciding to use poetry with our students.

Let me start with my feelings just after the lesson as I left the class with the general idea of poetry as a great resource for children learning. What is more, it was an idea that I have never thought about before when designing my own extracurricular classes for primary. Later I will tell you a recent experience I had with my pupils this week during the extracurricular lesson when trying to include poetry in it. One thing I discovered was that poetry can be applied in many different situations and it can involve different subjects.

Regarding my students way of learning I was trying to find different resources in order to help them with social and natural sciences. In particular, two of my students from 5^th grade had several problems to study these subjects. Week by week they were discovering different ways to studying such as drawings, schemas, tables or microteachings. So I thought why not to introduce poetry in their way of learning?  I do not lose anything just for trying, so I did it.

This day they were learning the different types of economic activities (primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors). When they arrived to the class they did not know the differences between them so I ask them to read the first sector and to create a stanza with the most important information both together. I was amazed of their creativity. And afterwards they had to do the same with the other two sectors but they have to do it one each and then put them in common.

Both girls were really happy with the activity, not only because they had learnt the contents easily, but also they had created poetry. And what is more, they went out of the class telling their mums they were poetess. However, there is one curious thing when they told that to their mums, I had to explain them the reason why they were creating poems in science class because I noticed their little confused eyes looking at me.  But I think it was a great discover! Don’t you think so?

This is a stimulating word. When you hear or read this word, it might remind you to some historical authors, or maybe to some of the most famous poems in literature… But, is there someone that thinks of a really fun and motivating time that had at school? This is a challenge for us!

Poetry develops creativity and imagination, besides some multiple intelligences such as linguistic and intrapersonal. It makes you think about aspects you have never reflected aboutbefore and itprovokes you tolook at life with others eyes completely different as the ones you have never had.

For all these reasons, we can start being in contact with this kind of literature since we are little, with some of the huge variety of children´s literature, so children begin to investigate this new trip full of experiences.

Inclasswehaveseensome videos about some experts talking about poetry in children’s classrooms. Most of them talk about interpretation. In my opinion, interpreting a poem is also needed to be worked in class, because it is not only reading aloud so the audience can understand and interiorise its meaning, but also when you read it to yourself.

Also we have seen some websites that tried to help students create a poem, but most of them where about children just giving words and a poem was created. I think this could be applied for an example so children can start having some ideas, but it doesn’t foment the creativity so they can make a poem by their own.

It could be really enriching for the class and for the individual, to encourage children to feel like real authors. This way, involving them in the creation of poems and making them take part of a project, is very motivating and exciting. Also, developing different skills, such us writing expression or mind opening, is very beneficial for them in the present and in the future.

Apart from all this, working with poetry can be used as another resource to foment reading habits in class… Think about it!

In the next link, we can see other of the multiple facets of Michael Rosen. On this website, he offers an example of how to create an enjoyable and pleasant atmosphere to foment reading and writing habits with poems. He calls it “The poetry-friendly classroom”.

Waterstones Children’s Laureate, retrieved from http://www.childrenslaureate.org.uk/previous-laureates/michael-rosen/michael-rosen-poetry-video-tips/

I hope you like it and I wish you add some more ideas!

Thankyou.