CONTENTS THROUGH POEMS FOR A MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Poems can be used in order to learn contents in a meaningful way; involving children in the process and making them to fell motivate using riddles and letters. First of all, I am going to explain you what is a riddle and a letter poem and how can we mixture both of them to teach a specific content. Then I am going to reflect on how can we use it in a classroom and the things that are behind it.

A riddle poem is a type of poetry that describes something without actually naming what it is, involving the readers through leaving them to guess. Riddles can be about anything. There are no rules on how to structure a riddle poem, a riddle can be funny or it can rhyme, it depends on the person writing the riddle.

A letter poem is a type of poetry that tells something to someone or something. Probably the main qualities of letter poems come from who the letter is addressed to and who signs it. Therefore, it follows the structure of a letter so it should start with “Dear_____”, the body should have what the writer wants to tell and finally, it should finished with the sign of the person that write it.

Let´s enjoy with poetry!

I have create the following poem in order to work the water, the water cycle, its states and where can we find it in a science lesson in a different and motivating way, I hope you like it! =)

RIDDLE/LETTER POEM: THE WATER.

Dear friend,

I need your help,

I cannot remember what I am.

I am in the surface, sleeping somewhere…

When it is hot, I am in oceans, rivers and lakes.

When it is cold, I am in the glaciers and high mountains and plains.

What is happening? I am in the air; I am going up to condense myself!

I am in the sky, waiting for the time…

When it is hot, I fall down as drops,

When it is cold, I fall down as scoops and rocks/stones.

This is my life, dear friend

I need your help,

I cannot remember what I am.

We can use this riddle/letter poem as a warming – up, to introduce the topic of the water and the water cycle and also as an activity to make the children create their own knowledge giving them this poem as a resource to take out the content. On the other hand, it is a strongly cross curricular activity because we are explaining science contents through a poem and it will keep the children´s attention because of the rhythms and the rhymes and also they will fell something special because it is a letter and they have seen a lot of them in their houses but they were directed to their parents and now they are going to receive one; they will recognize in a poem something of their reality with simple words and they will feel motivating; it is not a simple text.

Moreover, through this poem we are working on the 4Cs. First there is Content because from this poem we discover where we can find the water in its different states (liquid, gaseous and solid); we can work in metaphors such as drops and rocks and relate these ones to the rain, snow and hailstones; we can work the melting, evaporation, condensation. It is also Culture because we are learning about something that happens in our daily life and we can observe and experiment it, so when we read this poem we can recognize what is happening and the comparisons. Whereas, there is Cognition because children have to read and reflect in order to take out the main characteristics, recognize the metaphors link it with the real elements and finally guess what is writing the letter. Finally, it promotes Communication because this poem is telling you something and it is also asking about what it is; therefore you have to answer creating a communication.

We can use small poems to work big topics.