Use poetry slams inspired by Spanish poet Oscar Martin Centeno to encourage students to speak creatively in the target language.

Centeno is a multimedia artist who combines poetry with the use of digital technologies.

His ideas can be brought into the classroom by:

  • Cutting up a photo into fragments and writing one line of poetry on the back of each fragment
  • Pupils then have to write a second line
  • Piece the ‘poem’ back together by placing the fragments back into order
  • Then get the students to perform the poem orally

This is a great interactive starter activity to get students energised about poetry and speaking in the target language.

Lucy Meyer, Head of MFL at Bexley Grammar School, was inspired to suggest this teaching idea after hearing Dr Diana Cullell (University of Liverpool) speak about ¿Qué es poesía? Y… ¿qué podemos hacer con ella? at the CPD Subject Day on Exploiting Hispanic literary texts for language manipulation.

Schools Programme members can download the resources from the event in the PTI Staffroom.

Want to discover more inspiring subject knowledge? See our upcoming courses and events for 2017, including our CPD Subject Day's on Using films and image in the Spanish classroom and Contemporary French film, as well as our Spanish and French New Teacher Subject Days.

Find more knowledge nuggets here.

Image: By Pedro Ribeiro Simões via Flickr, licensed via Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/).