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Meet the Speakers: Joost Swaenepoel
27/02/2018 - 21:41
Room 316
11:00-11:40
40-minute workshop
Using poetry in a communicative, creative and expressive way
Joost Swaenepoel
In this workshop, I want to illustrate how we can use English poetry for children and young adults in a functional way to improve our students' speaking skills. The poems also challenge our pupils to use language in a creative way. We will use poems by Edward Lear, Michael Rosen, Carol Ann Duffy, Brian Moses, Brian Patten and Julia Donaldson.
Joost Swaenepoel’s Bio
Teacher Trainer
Vives Torhout / Sint-Jozefsinstituut-College
Belgium
Joost Swaenepoel teaches English language, culture and methodology at the teacher training department of Vives Torhout. He also teaches English and Dutch in the 3rd grade (years 11 and 12) at Sint-Jozefsinstituut-College in Torhout.
He has been teaching for nearly 20 years and he is also the co-author of the English coursebooks Spark 4-5 and Ace 1.
Why have you chosen this topic for your presentation?
We have been organising projects in an English partner school for nearly 10 years, in which my students use poems to create activities for English primary school children.
What do you want participants to take away from your presentation?
I want to illustrate that there are many wonderful poems that are useful in our classroom. We don't focus on literary analysis but on activities that allow and encourage our pupils to speak and interact.
Summary of presentation
Poetry for children and young adults can be a wonderful tool to have your pupils practise their communicative skills. The poems offer pupils chances to improve their speaking skills (fluency, pronunciation, intonation, articulation, willingness …), and they can also be used to encourage spoken interaction and writing. They also encourage us to work with language in a creative and expressive way. Several ideas are also useful as a lesson starter or a time filler.
In this workshop we use poems by Edward Lear, Michael Rosen, Carol Ann Duffy, Brian Moses, Chris Harris, Brian Patten and Julia Donaldson.
The selected poems aren't complicated at all, which makes them useful for younger and older students. The chosen activity will then help to differentiate and to define the difficulty level.