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I would like to begin by thanking McMillan for this amazing opportunity. It's such an honor to to take part of this amazing event uh bringing us together speakers from all around the world. This is amazing and it's a truly privilege to be here and we'll be talking uh about poetry, right? And uh one of real's questions was why poetry? Why did I get started with this topic? Right? And it has to do with a personal experience. So I will have to start this presentation by um making some reference to something that

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happened to me many many years ago when I was teaching uh in year three from primary school at a bilingual school. Um there was one particular child um who couldn't just simply connect with any topic at all. I mean we are educators we teach languages and we always try with different things right with games with puppets songs and still I could never get to him but except for one tiny thing. Um, one day uh we we were working uh with poetry, actually blackout poetry, one of my favorites, and I will talk about it. And uh you

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know what happened? He just put up his hand. He was usually the shy child, but still never fully connecting with the lesson. Imagine four periods of English and never really getting any concrete production out of him. Um and all of a sudden he put up his hand and he wanted to share just a few lines of his own poem. That was a wow moment. I mean like the whole classroom atmosphere changed. Um you know what I felt? I just knew that from that moment I managed to unlocked his voice. No. uh we could

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never hear him before that moment. It was thanks to poetry. Okay. So um I I realized that through poetry that's the moment where you can make a difference. you can make a difference in your classroom in children's lives right because that was the moment in which I knew I found something that I could connect with him right and it really shaped my way of teaching even at tertiary level you know I teach culture and instead of giving them thousands of novels for them to read I love working with poetry you know so this session is

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simply about that it's helping um our students discover their own voice that it's there right that it's really worth sharing okay so I've got to begin by just simply asking you what's poetry for you right so before we plunge into sharing concrete tips on how I implement poetry in primary education I want you to think of what poetry is for you like think beyond right that textbook definition, the one from the dictionary. Think about emotions, think about images, experiences. Right? I

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usually ask my students this question and they they usually tell me, "Oh, well, it's like playing with words. It's dancing with the words. Maybe because of the rhythm." Uh, let me see. Muse. I love that. Wow. Wow. It's just popping up too quick. A flow of imagination. hope. Oh. Oh my gosh. Love. Amazing. Definitely love that. Wow. Passion. It's my passion. Well, I think we caught uh someone who loves poetry in here. Emotions, feelings, art, art of communicating, things that we cannot do

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otherwise. Definitely. Yes, for sure. Look at that. Amazing ideas. Wow. Yes, definitely. Thank you for sharing. So um you know that there was one uh one student who said that poetry um was like letting the heart speak. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. Definitely. Right. Um but if I were to give my own sort of definition of what poetry is, poetry is having fun. It's playing, right? is something that we we've got to enjoy and we got to also discover discover our own feelings, connections, thoughts. Um, and it's

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making sure that we give every single student that space, that safe space for them to connect, to have a voice to be heard. And obviously at the same time they're using English. So no matter if they are good or not at English, they're communicating. We give them that moment for them to express themsel and it's through a poem. It's fabulous. They're using English. They're connecting with their own feelings and having fun. I mean, it's a win-win situation. Definitely, right? Um and like Naruda

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used to say, you know, every child is a poet. I would say that every poet is a poet. Actually, I haven't tried it myself yet. No, I've got to develop and foster that. But it's inside myself. Maybe I I express my own feelings through singing, dancing. Maybe that's my cup of tea. But still, I try poetry and it's a challenge really as educators, right? To keep poetry alive in our classroom. Sometimes we feel like intimidating. um we we feel it's something intimidating poetry know it's like oh

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critical thinking it's super hard primary education they won't get it but it's part of their natural way of communicating it's a natural language so why not giving it a try okay um so don't forget uh poetry is something simple but still meaningful powerful And it's about having fun. It's about um letting the creativity, the imagination flow. It's about working on vocabulary, on language obviously, but giving them that safe space to express emotions, connections, to develop values. All

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right? And remember that it does not require us as educators neither with students to be already uh experts let's say in literature. Okay. We can work with poetry across all subjects. We can make it collaboratively. We can integrate poetry in our lessons. Okay? No matter what we teach, no matter the age. Okay? So let's encourage our students. Um so I know that we're running out of time and I need to squeeze my minutes as to share some of my tips, some of the ways in which I introduce

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um my students to poetry. So here we go. I'm going to show you just simply a cap of a couple of them, right? A selection of my favorites. And uh the very be the very first one has to do with the name poems and it's very simple right you you might already know this I mean it's not rocket science to be honest um so you just grab the letter from a student's name we usually do it to celebrate birthdays for example and uh on each letter they write either a word an adjective a descriptive line and that is

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amazing to work on identity uh to foster uh bonding and imagine at the beginning of the year when we are thinking of those warm-up activities. Oh, we need to get to know each other. Well, this is an amazing an amazing activity that you can do from the very beginning of the year. You can ask them to define themselves through their names. know thinking of words that are related to their personality, to their likes. Okay. Um you can also combine poetry with art. You can ask them to make drawings. You can even

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include um QR codes in which they are recording themselves nor reading the poem. It's fabulous. And you can even uh kind of ask two students to sort their names and to write positive poems about each other and we work on uh social emotional intelligence. Okay. So in the same way that we can do it with names you know what we can do it it with anything right? And I I'm pretty sure that you heard of the acrostic poems right? So the same thing instead of names you can work with anything with a

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feeling with a concept you name it okay value so you choose a theme right imagine that you are learning um I don't know uh about the environment so I know you write environment which is quite long and they have to make connections with everything that they have learned for instance Okay. And again, what it's fabulous about this is that not necessarily they go to work on their own. They can work collaboratively. They can create group acrossics. Right? You can even turn this into a more digital

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activity. Right? Nowadays, technology is giving us a big hand on that. Or even think of the big wall, a collaborative acrostic wall in which everybody has to write one line together forming that giant acrostic poem. No, think I'm thinking about one of the the the poems that we did working on values with friendship. It was amazing. It was so collaboratively done. It was so beautiful, right? And it's just simply display there and they're proud of their work. Um, another super super easy activity

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that it's a poem. It's a list poem. Can you believe it? It's just simply a list of related ideas, things, right? And you can usually uh ask them to start with a pattern that helps a lot especially for younger learners. I see, I see, I see. And they follow that pattern, but not necessarily. That's one of the techniques. No, if you need to structure them, but take them for a walk. Ask them to pay attention to right the the the sounds of the classroom. That's good, right? Um, ask them to go

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to the playground to connect with nature, to connect with the present moment. What is it that they hear, that they feel, that they see? Senses. Okay. So, this is amazing. Or maybe if you're working with a book, actually I've got one of McMillan's books. Yes. Global stage that Well, most of McMillan books are full of images. Okay. So, I don't know. You just pick any image that you can think of. Yeah. And you ask them to make a list poem listing all of the things that they can see. It's like slow

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looking basically, right? but turned into a written task. It's amazing. Okay. Um and again, you can ask them to uh work on one line each or individually. You name it. Um this one is quite fun and interesting. The clue. Um, it's humorous actually and it's about describing a person and uh you've got to make sure that the four lines are rhyming in between like line number one and two a and a should rhyme in between and the third and the fourth one should also rhyme in between. Okay. So we got a

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pattern of a a bb. Yeah. And um you can ask them to write about a famous figure. I don't know Messi. I'm Argentinian so obviously we love connecting our lessons with football. Uh or any figure I mean after reading a unit on for example in this book there was one on the first man to the moon. Well, after reading, uh, doing some research, applying thinking routines, and you see, I'm connecting everything, uh, everything that we've been hearing. Um, well, what about making use of everything that we have

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learned while having fun and writing a humorous poem like that? Yeah. Um, you can even ask them to uh connect with units on science, on history, you name it. You can even combine the poem with drawings like this one with comic strips. Yeah. And what I'm thinking of is right now it's just in the spare at the moment. Instead of allowing them to write the name of the person they're writing about, just ask them to guess the person. So through those characteristics that were included in the poem, they should take a guess.

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Okay? and find out which is the person that they are referring to. Okay. Um Oh, I love this. And it's super fabulous for visual learners, right? Uh calligrams, poems that have that shape of the subject that actually you're writing about. So in this case, if we're writing about stars, you see that we pretend no to to to write a poem with that shape. If it is a poem about fish, well, the shape of a fish. So amazing for visual learners and again you can integrate any topic that you've been working with

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right and then later on display this as a poetry gallery for instance it's lovely and it's super simple and everything that has to do with drawing they love it and talking about drawing ah yeah my favorite blackout poetry you know these are for example my samples I love love uh blackout of poetry and it's working with a page of a text, an old one. Please don't hate me. But you know what I do? Uh I usually ask any librarian, well come on. Those books that you're about to throw them away.

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You see that they are torn apart. Give them to me. I use them. So I I do have a collection of these type of books, you know, with all of those pages loads. So give them to me because I work with those pages and I transform that into art. Yes. And I give my students just a piece of paper like this and I ask them to make a drawing. Obviously the drawing has to do based on the theme that we've been working right it could be either because it's a project on literature science. Again this is fabulous because

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you can integrate any subject and we are using recycled material. Okay. and they make the drawing but at the same time they got to make sure right so as to leave certain words right without being colored and with those words the magic happens and we are creating a poem I always like to say that the words are the ones that are finding you that are choosing you it's because of something there is a reason why you decided not to color those words and that is where magic happens okay so finding out no

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which words. You're just deciding not to color and then discovering that magic has happened that you have just created a poem. It's amazing. You can't imagine how proud of themselves they feel. Okay, it's beautiful. And lastly, um the haikos, these are the Japanese poems uh that are organized into uh three lines. And again you got to make sure that you follow the pattern of having uh in the first line five words, second line seven words and again the third one five words. Generally the hikers are about

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nature. Okay. So again let's have a walk outside to get inspired to connect with our feelings with the present. We can talk about the weather about animals colors. We can even have a hike war, right? It's super super interesting. So, you can also give it a try. But what else we can do with poetry? We can work on stations, right? We can experiment with all of these types of poems and have a stations, right? We can go beyond the traditional activities. Um we can ask them to summarize something

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that they have learned in science and history and literature and even ask them to get into the perspective of the character or even think of I don't know maths okay let's write a poem from the perspective of a fraction science the water cycle okay you are a water droplet so write a poem on that p through that perspective okay that's interesting you can even have poetry Fridays where you share the mini readings uh or you share a poem or you can have a poetry box where every single Friday or whatever

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day of the week you want you drop a slip of paper with a starting line and then one day we get them all together and we ask them to place them right together and create a poem. We can have an emotion poetry corner where every day no they write a line reflecting on how they are feeling. Yeah. Um, you name it. So, every lesson you can start with a warm up that has to do with poetry, no? Or connecting a poem with music, with art, with drama, so that we deepen connections with other subjects, with other disciplines. Okay? So, it's

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always about finding a moment for our students to connect with poetry because poetry again has to be fun but meaningful and accessible for everybody, right? Shy students, the ones who are excellent at English, the ones that are not that good, but we need to foster confidence. We need to help them find their own boys. Maybe through that poem that's the only way they are um they managed to share something with us and create that bond that we were probably missing with them. Okay. And remember we

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are not pretending not to ask our students to become poets. No definitely not. It's about teaching them that what they got to share with us that their word is valuable that it matters. Okay. So, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Um, and obviously if you want to keep this conversation going, please feel free to drop me a line to connect with me. You have over there all my contact details and um and I would love to kind of leave a sort of challenge before I leave. Um I would like you to

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think of maybe this week or the following uh to try try one poetry uh activity in your classroom. Okay. And see you know what happens and see how your students voices come more let's say alive in the class. Okay. So let's see if we we can uh live up to this challenge. Okay. And then then you let me know. All right. So once again thank you