Foundation Ideas
I used a simple power point to introduce penguin poetry to nursery aged children penguins We sang them together and acted them out. Then we wrote a simple list poem about how a penguin would move.
I did a similar session with reception except focused on how different birds might move after watching different birds on you tube such as dancing flamingos http://youtu.be/KW8GX2n4qbY and then just writing very simple lines of description:
eg. Pink flamingos dancing on their toes.
Heads held high
Like ballet dancers
Year 1:
Year 1 pupils wrote a narrative poem based on Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen http://youtu.be/7BxQLITdOOcc and we then ate chocolate buttons and imagined what it would have been like to creep through the house to find the hidden box of chocolates. Year 2 wrote our own version of Ten things found in a Wizard’s pocket by Ian McMillan https://performapoem.lgfl.org.uk/public/poems/mcmillan_poem.pdf
Our version was about 10 things we would find in Willy Wonka’s hat! I brought a top hat with lots of different sorts of chocolate in it and then the more able pupils worked on their own poems and the less able worked in a group with myself or the class teacher. Here is what they wrote:
Year 6 ideas:
I wanted to tell you about the Year 6 pupils who spent a lesson worked on War Poetry based on the evocative picture book The Rabbits by Shaun Tan:
We looked at the image below and discussed what we felt was happening and how the characters felt. We then re-enacted the scene and collected our ideas to explore the emotions:
If I had more time we would have listened to Kenneth Branagh reading Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. http://youtu.be/ghUFB2WZD6A
The pupils then had the rest of the session to construct their own poems using the page about fear from Descriptosaurus to help them construct their lines. Here are a few that they produced. They were so focused and spent time thinking about how each line flowed into each other. They emailed me some of their finished work and I was really impressed by their thoughtfulness and care with the language and ideas they used!
