Learning poetry and rhymes has great benefits for our young learners. These are just some of them:
- It develops children’s literacy skills, especially in the area of phonological awareness. Recognizing and manipulating sounds helps them improve their reading and spelling.
- Memorizing poems and songs widens their vocabulary and language structures and improves their fluency.
- It also motivates children and keeps them engaged because it gives them the opportunity to use the foreign language like a native speaker would.
- Poems and rhymes also encourage children to be creative by showing them beautiful ways of expressing themselves.
This trimester we challenged our 3rd graders to memorize a long complicated but funny poem related to the topic we were working on in Unit 5, “going to the doctor”. The results went beyond our expectations, we are very proud of them!
Here you can read the poem, do you accept the challenge?
«I cannot go to school today!»
Said little Peggy Ann McKay
«I have the measles and the mumps
A gash, a rash, and purple bumps
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry
I’m going blind in my right eye
My tonsils are as big as rocks
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more, that’s seventeen
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue
It might be instamatic flu
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke
I’m sure that my left leg is broke
My hip hurts when I move my chin
My belly button’s caving in
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains
My nose is cold, my toes are numb
I have a sliver in my thumb
My neck is stiff, my spine is weak
I hardly whisper when I speak
My tongue is filling up my mouth
I think my hair is falling out
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight
My temperature is 108
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear
There’s a hole inside my ear
I have a hangnail, and my heart is… what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is Saturday? Ha-ha
G’bye, I’m goin’ out to play»
Isabel Mazarrasa
Departamento de Idiomas