poetryclass - Roger Stevens - poetry and the NLS

Introduction

At first sight the poetry component of the NLS (National Literacy Strategy) can seem intimidating. But it basically breaks down into three elements:

Reading poetry (with a strong emphasis on building class collections and anthologies)
Discussing poetry
Writing poetry in a wide variety of forms and styles, making use of traditional, classical and contemporary poems as models

It is this third element that is the subject of this guide. But before we delve in any depth into this third part, we need to remember that there is a fourth and very important element to teaching poetry: Poetry should be fun.

In my travels as a poet, I meet many adults who are at best indifferent towards poetry and at worst hate it. This is almost always because of the ways in which they were made to study poetry when they were at school. We would be doing a great disservice to both children and to poetry if we, as modern educators, did not take a lesson from those unfortunate and unimaginative teachers of the past and did not vow to instil a love, rather than dislike, of poetry in our pupils.

Even if you come to teaching as no real fan of poetry, with so much ingenious and stimulating contemporary work produced expressly for children now available, you no longer need to search too far for suitable material and are likely to discover pieces that you, too, can find enjoyable. Happily, I meet many teachers these days who share with me a belief that teaching poetry can be a pleasurable experience for both teacher and pupils. Poetry should be approached with a sense of fun, excitement and discovery.

Writing and composing poetry in the NLS is largely based on the idea of using different poetic forms and styles as models.

Here follows a breakdown of these forms with some ideas to help you use them in the classroom. They are presented in roughly the chronological order in which they appear in the NLS. In the Key Stage Two section I have tried to give an example for each term, as laid out in the NLS. In real life, of course, different forms of poems appear at different times - you certainly don't have wait until a child reaches Year 4 before you can read her a haiku!

Table of contents - see separate page here

Acknowledgements

Unless otherwise stated, all the poems in this article and the verse used in examples is written by and is (c) Roger Stevens. Mary Had a Little Lamppost is by Roger Stevens and Michael Leigh. Mr Walton's on the Playground and Poem For Sale appear in I Did Not Eat the Goldfish by Roger Stevens (Macmillan Children's Books).

About the Author

Roger Stevens has had more than a hundred poems for children published in wide-ranging anthologies from The Hutchinson Treasury of Children's Poetry (Hutchinson) to The Works (Every kind of poem you will ever need for the Literacy Hour) (Macmillan). His verse-novel for teenagers, The Journal of Danny Chaucer (Poet) (Orion) was published in May 2002 and was dramatized on BBC Radio 4 in June 2003. His solo collections for children include I Did Not Eat the Goldfish (Macmillan) and The Monster That Ate the Universe (Macmillan). Roger is also a member of the Poetry Society's poetryclass initiative - for school INSET programmes and teacher training. His website includes more teacher's resources and is a platform for children to publish their own poetry: www.poetryzone.co.uk

Bookshelf (References to books in article)

Paul Cookson, Tongue Twisters and Tonsil Twizzlers
(Macmillan Children's Books)

Paul Cookson, Let's Twist Again
(Macmillan Children's Books)

Pie Corbett and Brian Moses, Catapults And Kingfishers
(Oxford University Press)

Good anthologies of school poems include:

The Worst Class In School - Poems collected by Brian Moses
(Wayland)
The Secret Lives of Teachers - Poems chosen by Brian Moses
(Macmillan Children's Books)
When Teacher Isn't Looking - Poems chosen by David Harmer
(Macmillan Children's Books)

If you are looking for an anthology that includes different poetic forms I would recommend The Works - Every kind of poem you will ever need for the Literacy Hour - chosen by Paul Cookson (Macmillan's Children's Books). Another good anthology is The Unidentified Frying Omelette - edited by Andrew Fusek Peters (Wayland).

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