Vitoria Calling

Kensington and Espirito Santo connected on Friday, February 22 as Grade 4C had a webcam chat with a Brazilian poet.

The class spoke to Ronald Carvalho (the grandfather of two Southbank students) using Skype.
Kindergarten students were also invited to experience how methods of communication are developing.

Ronald was sat at a computer in Vitoria, the capital state of Espirito Santo in Brazil, while the students were in the Kensington IT lab. All students sat patiently and listened to the questions posed by Grade 4, including: "How long have you been a poet for?", "How did you become a poet?", "What type of poems do you write?", "What is a good poem?" and "Have you ever written a poem that you didn't like?".

In answer to "How many poems have you written?", Ronald gave the impressive answer of "more than 2000". He has been writing poetry since the age of eight, and had his first poem published at 12. The children were amazed that he had written so much over the past 50 years.

The session ended with Ronald reading a poem in Portuguese and thanking the class for listening to him. He said: "Poetry is a way to happiness - a way to understanding the world. I encourage you all to read a lot of poems."

The experience was fantastic in itself, but linked with the PYP concept of Progress (within How the World Works) and also feeds into the class' current writing work.