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For Burns Day we asked learning consultant to give us his take on inspiring children to try a bit of Burns.

It isn't every week that poetry dominates the news, but this past week may just be exceptional. The appointment of Liz Lochhead as Scotland's national poet, in succession to the late Edwin Morgan, continues a fine cultural tradition in the life of the nation and could hardly have come at a more appropriate time, in the week when we celebrate the birth of THE national poet, the man whom , another of our modern-day poets and Burns biographer, described as 'the rhythmic heart of the nation, forever supplying warm sustaining blood to the otherwise cold body of Scotland'. Cultural status doesn't come much higher than that!

The young Robert differed from most of his peers as a result of the value his father placed on a formal education, he was also conversant with some of the great writers in the English language and could quote freely from Shakespeare and the Bible. How many young people leaving Primary 7 could do that today?

But the world is different today, I hear you say. How is it possible, in the age of the iPod, Wikipedia and Lady Gaga, to engage children in the life and works of a ploughman poet who has been dead for over 200 years? Of course, the world moves on, as last week's release of the (available free from iTunes) will testify, but some things never change, like the quest for love, the struggle to feed and care for one's family, the companionship of friends, the appreciation of music and a good story, the search for justice and the absolute belief in the equality of men, regardless of colour, class or creed, the very things which Burns valued in his life, and has come to represent in ours. And thanks to new technology, the interest in the man and his works is likely to increase, rather than diminish, with time.

How apt for a man whose greatest achievement was arguably that he collected and preserved for future generations the traditional songs and tunes of Scotland, many of which would have been lost but for his determined efforts - no Microsoft Word, Google docs, memory sticks or CDs at the end of the 18th Century!

The first engagement with Burns should always be through the ears, rather than the eyes. After all, many of the early poems were not originally written down, but composed by the author in his head, memorised and delivered first-hand to their normally flattered recipient (the biting satires would come later). Hence the importance of rhythm and rhyme, and the need for the poems to be spoken aloud.

So when introducing Burns in the classroom, make use of the many wonderful recordings on the Â鶹Éç archive and let the poems speak for themselves. Children will delight in the imagery, the onomatopoeia and the often ghoulish nature of the subject matter. Burns had latched on to the fact that we all like a scary story long before Harry Potter or the Twilight phenomenon.

Set kids the challenge of identifying the Scots words which are still in use today. Send them away to ask their grannies to supply them with more, and when they are ready, encourage them to tell their own stories in the style of their very own national bard. More importantly, try it yourself, just like I did!

Some Interesting Facts about Robert Burns (That Perhaps You Didn't Know)

• After Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns has more statues dedicated to him around the world than any other non-religious figure.
• Auld Lang Syne is recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as one of the three most popular songs in the English language, along with Happy Birthday and For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.
• A miniature book of Robert Burns' poetry was carried into orbit by astronaut Nick Patrick on a two-week space mission in 2010, completing a 5.7 million mile trip and 217 orbits of the Earth.
• Robert Burns was the first ever person to appear on a commemorative bottle of Coca-Cola, in 2009.
• US fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger claims to be a direct descendent of Robert Burns.
• Burns' body was dug up 19 years after he died to be placed in a new cemetery in Dumfries. During the exhumation his skull was measured and found to be bigger than that of the average man.
• Pop singer Michael Jackson is said to have been a big fan of the poet, and there are rumours that he worked on an album, not yet released, setting the Scotsman's poems to music.