The other
day in class we were talking about poems and what children think about them.
Raquel
started the class with a HAIKU, avery short form of Japanese poetry read in one breathe, which was a new
type of poetry that I was unaware of it.
Raquel
shared with us very worrying comments of children about poetry. They think working
with poems is boring, difficult and some of them haven’t ever read a poem in
English.
WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE THIS!
Sometimes
children don’t know that they are doing poetry.
Raquel showed us some sentences of children from 4 to 8 that describe LOVE.
Here I attach some examples:
- "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." ~ Rebecca- age 8
- "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." ~ Billy - age 4
- "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." ~ Karl - age 5
- "Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs." ~ Chrissy - age 6
- And my favourite one: "Love is what makes you smile when you're tired." ~ Terri - age 4
These children are doing poetry, and I may say that they are doing a marvelous
one.
We were working in class a different way of working with poems in the
classroom. In groups of 3 or 4 students we had to move from one table to the
other, in order to complete the task together.
1. First, we had to read individually the poem. There were different types
of poems:
a) List poem
b) Riddle poem
c) Letter poem
2. Then, we share our opinions with the people in the group.
3. Each poem had a different task to do. In some of them, we had to add a
part of the poem. In other, we had to answer a questions or solving a problem.
4. At the end, we share our poems with the rest of the class.
It’s amazing the good work that we did! From the beginning we were very
motivated in the task. I was doing my poems with Maria Salazar and Cristina
Cano and I had so much fun working with them! I would like to share some of our
poems with you.
"A magic dust that makes you fly.
A Happiness
machine
The most
beautiful animal in the world
A magic
chocolate machine
A magic
lamp
A teletransportes
The
power of invisibility
The most
beautiful place in the world
A fairy mother"
"What do you collect?
Fruit, vegetables and fish
or cookies, chocolate and sweets?"
In order to work poems with children, I consider useful to use pictures
next to the keywords, contextualize the poem at the beginning, tell the child
to draw a part of the poem and with the other classmates build a “comic poem”,
to represent what is happening in the poem, to create hypothesis about it, and
so on.
What do you think about using poems in class? Do you think that students
will be afraid to work with them or you consider that they will have fun while
learning a new way of reading? Do you like poetry? Have you ever write a poem
in Spanish or English only for pleasure?
Hello Leti! During the class that you have mentioned before I have took into account the place of poetry in children´s life and I have felt indentify in some of the sentences. For example, for me it is difficult and boring too but I think that this is because of the way that teachers during my life have presented me poetry; they have not asked me for a poem so many times and the times they have done it they have not help me to start or guided me during it, whereas I have felt lost and frustrated.
ResponderEliminarSince this point of view I have been reflecting in the importance of using poems in class because through them you can work the students ‘creativity, enhance reading and develop communicative and analytical skills. Rhythms and Rhymes are important too because they attract children´s attention and make them use different functions of the language.
In my opinion, if students have not been working on poems and you do not help them, they will be afraid but if they have been working in some strategies and techniques such as the ones that you have proposed and they have written some poems before then, children will be comfortable creating poetry and they will enjoy with it.
I have never written a poem only for pleasure but I love your ideas to help student to write a comment and I will try to write a poem using some of the suggestions that you have told us.
Clara V.
Hi Leti!
ResponderEliminarI found very instructive this poetry class that we had, as you did. However, before that class, my thoughts about poetry were very similar to those that Raquel shows us from real students: I cannot remember enjoying reading poems when I was in the High School, I found them difficult to understand and I felt ashamed if the teacher asked me to read to everyone in class. Definitely I hated poetry.
Nevertheless, once again Raquel shows us a different point of view for poetry and the idea that I keep in mind since that class is that “Poetry can be found everywhere”. There can be poetry in the honest answer that children give to the question “What is Love?” as can be seen above. My favourite one is "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." ~ Billy - age 4
For these reasons, we should take poetry into account in our future lesson because it can be worked in many different ways as we did in class; we had very good examples of that day. I had fun too solving age problems, adding new crazy verses, finding out what I.C Stars means… It is a different way of reading and also writing everything we want to, the point is the way we show it to children and you have given us some useful tips, thanks!
Cris G
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarHello Leti!
ResponderEliminarFirst of all I love the sentences of children! They are really cute and some of them know perfectly the mean of love although they are very small. I can’t remember if I was so poet with four years (I guess that I wasn't).
From my point of view poetry is composed by feelings but someone decided to add some rules to express these feeling. As rime or verses. These rules could be one of the reasons why the children most of the times are afraid of the poetry. Suddenly they face with a text with a very different structure from their fairy tales and these texts sounds really strange when you read them allow!!! Why I should intonate? Why I can’t write more words in a line? I CAN’T UNDERSTAND IT! Something like this happens inside our student’s brain.
Using poems in class is a wonderful way to express feelings; we are creating an insensitive generation of children, when some of these children decided to be different and write a poem to the girl he is in love whit now he will be a freak. That’s a pity. Don’t you think so? Feelings and fears must be another objective to work with at school.
As we saw with Raquel in the last medium class session poems could work lots of topics. So poetry is not only a question of good writers anyone can do it with patience and love. For me it’s a great tool. Also I think that the teacher don’t present the poetry in a good way. Most of the times they related poetry only with the classical writers and for children that’s not very interesting…We have poetry everywhere, in songs, in Valentine cards in advertisement…We should present it as a daily day.
I posted on my blog a very funny way (for me) to introduce the rhythm in a funny way:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vsJ-_3N3V2E/UCmXs-kkQPI/AAAAAAAAAMI/52s09cAT3SE/s640/IMG_0636.jpg
Do you think that we can start introducing poetry in early ages with this kind of things?
MUA!!!
Laura :D