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A POEM A TERM

Writing Poems
& 
The National Literacy Strategy

a guide for teachers:  Year Six

by Roger Stevens

""Poetry should be approached with a sense of fun, 
excitement and discovery."
- Roger Stevens

KEY STAGE TWO

Year Six, Term One

1. The Animal Inside
(Term One)

The following idea is based on Wilderness, a poem by Carl Sandburg. I've adapted this technique from the excellent Catapults And Kingfishers by Pie Corbett and Brian Moses (Oxford University Press).

This poem begins with a list. 

(1) Ask every member of your class to each write down an emotion or feeling. This should be something that they often experience, for example:

• anger
• loneliness
• anxiety
• happiness
• sadness

(2) Then ask them to write down a sport that they either play or enjoy watching.

(3) Next, something they do at school.
(4) Something they do at home.
(5) A bad habit.
(6) And finally a good habit.

Each pupil should have a list of six words. (Work quickly on this list) My list might be:

Anger
Football
Maths
Singing
Laziness
Helpful

Now ask them to match each item on the list with an animal. Some animals will be obvious choices but some will need more thought. An angry animal might be a tiger or a grizzly bear. But what animal is good at maths? Encourage them to look for more apt or less obvious choices. My list might now look like this:

Anger - Tiger
Football - Rhino
Maths - Beaver
Singing - Seagull
Laziness - Lion
Helpful - Dog

The first draft of the poem goes like this -

There is a tiger inside me who is angry
There is a rhino inside me who plays football
There is a beaver inside me who builds dams

Work on this first draft very quickly. I would give a class five minutes maximum to complete this. 

The second draft is the most important. For this ask them to expand each line.

The poem is actually about themselves. What makes a lion angry? What makes them the writer of the poem? Ask them to make a direct link between the animal and themselves.

The Animal Inside

There is a tiger inside me
who leaps from the jungle and rips flesh with his claws.
There is a rhino inside me,
an ace defender who will never let the ball go past.
There is a beaver inside me
who builds intricate dams
There is a gull inside me
who wheels high over the ocean and cries the ocean's song
There is a lion inside me,
asleep in the Savannah sun
There is golden retriever inside me
with a wagging tail, always anxious to help

Continue to next section (Year 6 Term 2)

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