Creating poems

Hello everyone again!

 

First of all, I want you to visit my partner’s blog because I think she has thought about the feelings we have at this time of the course, and I totally agree with everything she has said (DEC, 4):

 http://englishteacherinwonderland.blogspot.com.es/ 

 

And now, I am going to explain the reason of why I am writing again about poetry for children. My last post was focused on the importance of a poem in a little boy. It was more focused in reading than in creating poems by their own. I would like you to think about if all of us, including children, are able to create a poem following different steps.

 

I had never written a poem before I had to do it for completing a task, so I felt very confused and afraid of doing it for the first time with my age. Finally, I could do it without any problem, and I also liked the results I got. It is easier than we think, and that’s what we have to tell our children.

 

Do you know what these is?

1.       Haiku. It is an unrhymed, syllabic poem adapted from the Japanese. Its structure is composed by three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. A haiku is necessarily imagistic and concrete because of its brevity.

 

 

2.       List poem. It is a simple poem which consists in the repetition of a structure many times. It could be only a list of things, or a sentence repeated during all the poem.

 

3.       Letter poem. It is an unreal letter for someone or something without much sense. It has to be a rhythm in the last syllables.

 

 

4.       Riddle poem. It is a description of something in order to guess what the poem is talking about. It could be finished with “Who am I?”.

 

 

The pictures correspond with the four kind of poems I have done.

 

The teacher can focus the activities related with creating poems in different ways, although it is very important to give clear instructions of what they have to do. Giving them only the kind of poem could be difficult, so the teacher can play with the context, or even images. She can give children some pictures in order to facilitate them the creation of sentences taking into account the story and the characters.

 

As I have said before, “Creating poems is easier than we think”. Why? Because it is an opened activity where they can use their imagination, originality and also their thought about the real life. The role of the teacher should be related with evolving them in these activities. Children without imagination think that this topic is boring, so we have to try them not to think that. Looking for rhythms is interesting and fun, once you have you mind opened.

 

Think about it! 

Poetry

I am here again to share with you my opinion about the importance of poetry for children. I was thinking in doing this post about an activity we are going to develop next Tuesday with children in my university, but I prefer to write about that next time to explain what we have done and my feeling doing something I want to.

 

Children’s poetry is poetry appropriate written for children. It includes:
 

1.      Folk poetry.

2.      Poetry written intentionally for young people.

3.      Poetry written originally for adults.

4.      Poems taken from prose Works.

 

I have been reading different articles about the importance of teaching poetry in Primary Education. I knew that it was important but I didn’t know many reasons because when I was a child, my teacher didn’t use to show us poems. I think I have now a clear opinion if someone asks me “Why is poetry so important for children?”

Children should make poetry a daily habit because if they try it, they will do it for the rest of their lives.

The teacher and parents should give oral readings to children, who will then carry poetry with them into an adulthood. They could use as a key my two best children’s poets on the 19^th century: Lewis Carrol and Edward Lear. Poetry is essential for children because it is “the best words in the best order”. The rhythm and rhymes can help children develop a love of reading, and for the language too. Once kids begin flexing their writing muscles, poetry can spark their creativity and let their imagination soar. One of the most important things is the idea of making the reading of a poem as an activity, not as a requirement, thinking on different ways to evolve children reading poems in their free time.

My own suggestion as a project to include poetry in a classroom is that the children’s school organizes a Poetry cafe, where parents and kids are invited to give poetry readings after school. I have thought about that because I think parents who get the reading habit early are bound to pass into their children.

I have chosen a poem from Julia Donaldson that I want to share with you because I think it is an example of a useful poem and the right way to introduce poetry.

 

 

I hope you liked it.

Classroom library project

I have chosen a topic that probably most of you know about it and also it could be very repetitive, but I will try to focus in a different way than my partners.

A classroom library is, as the name shows, a space inside the classroom where children can be evolve in reading. As I said before, all the teachers should think about it, and try to develop it in the best way they know because there are many ways of creating a classroom library adapted to your children. You can focus the idea in their interests, or even in their needs.

I have had to create one classroom library two weeks ago with a group of four people showing how it will be work if we use it with a real context. At first, we tried to find something original to make, but we could see that it was better something effectively because children will be evolve if you work hardly in evolve them, it is not very important if everything is beautiful and handmade. Also it is very important the tasks you want to develop related with the library, not only the disposition of the library. You should think you are the main important factor for the children in that moment, you should show them motivation, participation, integration and all the factors to facilitate them to read.

Reading is one of the most important things that a teacher should take into account when children are starting to learn the grammar, the sentences and the vocabulary. They need to appreciate the importance of a book in their lives with the experience of reading it; it is not something that they will learn because someone tells them. In my opinion, the way that a teacher chooses to create a classroom library is very important for the children’s future. When I was a child I didn’t read at all because my teacher didn’t use to tell me and repeat it to me that it was important. If we were 27 in my class, we probably had 30 books per classroom, and we only had to read the books, without any motivation or activities to do after reading. I think it is a mistake that my teacher committed with us, so I will try to avoid it.

I have had the opportunity to see a project like this, which is being developed in a school where I have done my Practicum I and II. They have given to their library three books per child, so they have almost 80 books per classroom, obviously there are books of all the topics (love, adventure, magic, Disney…). Children receive a sticker when they finish a book, and it will be an adventurous reading per month, the person who has more stickers that month. They also have to complete two tasks in order to motivate their partner about the book they have read.

Fairy Tales

I have decided to talk about fairy tales for children this time. I think my choice is this one because when we hear “fairy tales” we usually think about Disney stories which contains a princess that wants to be with a handsome and strong prince, and that’s not totally true.

A fairy tale is a type of short story that has fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids or gnomes. Magic and enchantments appears in different ways. The term is also used to describe happy endings or romances, but not all the stories need to have these characteristics. The main point is that fairy tales are not true, and couldn’t be true.

This kind of stories are found in oral and literary form, but actually only the literary form can survive over generations. We have had fairy tales for thousand of years, although the term was created in the late 17^th century by Madame d’Aulnov. Many of fairy tales have variation in multiple cultures around the world.

Little Red Riding Hood is the one that I have chosen to talk about because I have seen that it has many different versions of the story, and I only knew the Disney one which was written by Charles Perrault. Grimm’s brothers have their own version called Little Red Cap and also Beatrix Potter (a writer that we have studied in this subject) has her own one called “The tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck”. The main interesting thing is that some countries have another versions, as Germany, Poland, Italia, Austria and France.

 

 

I am going to explain you one the best one for me, which is the Charles Marelles version, “The true History of Little Golden-Hood”. The story begins similar to the original one, a little peasant girl often called Little Golden-Hood has to take a piece of cake to her grandmother and come back without stopping to chatter on the way with people she doesn’t know. She has to cross a wood when she hears something. She finds a wolf who come frisking up to her like a good dog, saying that it is a friend wolf. She tells him she is going to her grandmother’s house and he replies that he shall gets before her and it is going to tell her grandmother that she is coming. When Little Golden-Hood arrives, the wolf is on the grandmother’s bed and they start talking about her arms, tongue, teeths… Finally, she starts running when she knows that she is not her grandmother and wolf tries to devour her but she only catch her little hood. Luckily, the fire-colored hood burn his tongue right down his throat. Just at this moment the grandmother arrives, returning from the town.

 

 

As you have seen, there was not hunter, the grandmother was alive, and the power is only in the little hood, which was one of those magic objects that I said before that a Fairy Tale should have.

 

See you soon!

My reading map

 

 

I am here again! This time I have chosen an exercise to talk about. I know it is not a big topic, and also it is not something that everybody probably know.

What could you imagine if I only say “Reading map”? Very easy, isn’t it? As you are thinking it is a map, the map you like the most or the map you are able to understand. And the word “reading” is easier because you don’t need to think more than the real definition and we both know what reading is. Well, obviously I didn’t want you to think only about those meanings, I want to explain you my experience making a reading map to facilitate you the understanding of what is it, what is used for, when you can do it and how.

I have done only one and my first impressions about this exercise were not good at all. I thought that I didn’t remember what books I liked when I was a child, and even when I was 15. Also, I am very bad drawing and I am not original… So, I knew that it was to be very difficult for me to complete the task. But I tried the best I could.

What you have to do is two documents thinking about your whole reading life, since you were a child until now, and trying to draw or make a collage with all of the books and the stages in which you read that. And finally, you need to explain in another paper what you have done and why. After telling you the characteristics of a reading map I am going to explain you why I think is a very good material to do with children.

It is an open task where teacher can develop the rules depending of the level or age of children. Logically, if you are a teacher of Fourth of Primary you will know that they haven’t read lots of books yet. But they can do a reading map drawing the characters, or writing ALL of the books they have read. Also, children are able to develop different skills as thinking, drawing, writing, memory and communication (with parents or friends). Children probably like the exercise because they don’t have a way to do it, they can do it however they want following the main rules. Finally, the teacher can organize how to show all of the maps to rest of the class with different ways, we have done it as a museum but you can do it as a game or as a quiz.

Behind an apparently easy and funny activity there are a lot of aims that a teacher could get with their children taking into account that all of them don’t paint or don’t write in the same way, but all of them are invited to think about it.

Now I invite you to see the best reading map that I have seen in my class, and also how was the experience with the museum.

 

 

Thank you, and see you soon!

Nursery Rhymes

As some of you know I am Laura, and I have created this blog to share with you my opinions, knowledge or something I could find interesting about Childrens’s Literature in English.

 

We have done almost a month of classes, so I have chosen my favourite class to talk about it. Do you remember what we did in Nursery Rhymes class?

It was a middle-group class, we were about 20 people, and we started the class talking with our partner about what could be the meaning of Nursery Rhymes. I have to say that I didn’t listen about that before. We finally found the definition and some characteristics through a fast dictation. But the most interesting part of the class came when we had to link different nursery rhymes with its historical event.

 

I want to try to explain you why this topic was interesting to me. Well, I have listened lots of children songs since I was a child, but I think I have never thought about the meaning before. Probably you can hear some words and you are able to relate this word to a children story without thinking in why someone has written or invented this song. But I could be able to see the reasons of some stories, and I understood the difference between being a child and being a teacher. A teacher knows that children won’t understand the whole meaning while they are listening the song, but I think a part of their minds will get the information and they will use it in another moment of their lives.

 

I also think that if you want to show your children nursery rhymes you should take into account that there are different types of choral speaking as refrain, unison, antiphon, cumulative, solo lines or line around. Why am I saying this? Because when you know which are the objectives that you want to get with your students, you can study what type will be easy for children to get it. As I said before I have never worked with Nursery Rhymes but I think if you want everything to understand what they are singing at the same moment, they should sing together. Or for example, if you want them to make a group task will be better use an antiphon choral speaking.

 

Finally, I want to show you my favourite nursery rhyme. I have song lots of times as a summer camp instructor without knowing that is called nursery rhyme.

Have you ever listened or song “If you are happy and you know it?”

In my opinion this song is very useful for 4-5 year-old-children because they can understand it and it is easy to follow, and also they can learn vocabulary specific with body parts or body movements.

 

 
 
I hope you liked it and I am waiting for your posts!