The Scottish Poetry Library is an excellent institution and you can explore it through its website. Tomorrow is National Poetry Day here and to celebrate the library has recorded an interview with the fabulous John Hegley. You can see it from 10am on October 1st2020. https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/2020/09/national-poetry-day-2020-at-the-spl/ This is also a good place to find poems … Continue reading Poetry Library
Thursday 1stOctober is National Poetry Day in the UK and it is a lovely thing to celebrate at school and at home. It’s time to listen to poetry, to read it, alone and with others and to write some poems -either alone, or, rather better for this day, with others. Visit the National Poetry Day … Continue reading Poetry Day
Here is a playful challenge: Write out your name. Make a list of all the words you can find using only the letters in your name. You may only use each letter once in any one word. So Danny Brown could have three ‘n’s in a word but only one ‘d’ or ‘b’. His list might begin … Continue reading Words in your name
Here is a nice way to get into a story, or to discover a character. Begin with a door. You could draw the door or write about it. Think about the shape and size of the door, what is it made from, and what colour it is. What leads up to it? What surrounds it? … Continue reading Door
Sometimes the blank page glares up and we don’t know where to start. We need a few words on paper just get us going. We can use freewriting to help us to develop and sort ideas about something we have been thinking of for a while. Freewriting works well at the start of a project when we … Continue reading Starting blocks
Read! Read, read, read. Discover new ways of looking at things, different people and places, different ways of saying things. Here is the opening paragraph of one of our favourite novels, Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer, my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for … Continue reading Because of Winn-Dixie
Sound: the sound of a word, a phrase, sentence, paragraph is important. We’ve spoken before about reading your work aloud. The sound of what you write has an impact on its meaning; on how the ear receives it. The linguist, David Crystal, asks us to imagine an alien planet on which live two races: the Lamoniansand … Continue reading Tittle Tattle
I frequently try to weigh up the benefits of providing material for a class and getting them involved. My choice or theirs? When it comes to choosing poems to read aloud, I know that I have in mind a variety of poems that I want children to experience. I want to introduce them to things … Continue reading Poetry jar
Here is a little rhyme we have often used for fun. It comes from a favourite collection of short rhymes written by Clyde Watson and illustrated by her sister, Wendy: Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes. Dilly Dilly Piccalilli has a clear pattern and invites a little bit of nonsense. Simply share the rhyme and then see if you can make … Continue reading Dilly Dilly Piccalilli
Writers need to read, to hear new ideas and words; to absorb different rhythms and other people’s perspectives. A poem a day, read aloud, brings all these to the classroom. Some teachers I know have a book of poems designed exactly for this, a poem a day. A poem can be tucked into almost any … Continue reading A poem a day
Writing Box 