Last week in our languages module with Anna, we were learning about writing poetry. When I heard that we ourselves were going to be writing some poetry, I was dreading it.

From my experiences in school, poetry was not in the slightest bit fun. It was all about analysing the poems and writing essays on them. I do remember enjoying poetry in primary school, but it was only covered once a year at the annual poetry competition. I feel that secondary school almost ‘killed’ poetry for me, so when I found out we had to do it in a workshop, and then have to actually teach poetry, I knew it would not be something I enjoyed.

However, I was very wrong.

We learnt that poetry should be based around fun and enjoyment in both early/ middle and upper primary, as shown below;

Early/ Middle- enjoyment/ playing with rhyme and nonsense

Upper Primary- exploring the way language is used/ experiment

secondary- deconstructing/ analyse

We learnt that it was very important to encourage children to explore their feelings in poems, so that they can develop empathy and self awareness. At the beginning, I was not too sure as to how to do this, but having read some children’s poems, I know have a better grasp on how to teach this.

 

During the two hour workshop with our lecturer Anna, we had the opportunity to write lots of different styles of poems. I was used to the types of poems such as acrostic, limericks and haiku’s in primary schools as I had learnt about these as a school pupil, but we spent the time learning about different styles of poems. We learnt about a number of new styles and had the opportunity to try writing some ourselves and I feel like I enjoyed it so much I had to share my poems.

Daisy Chain- word begins with the last letter of the previous word.

The elegant turtles eats salad daily.

The end draws straight with haste.

Dreamers Dream

A flower dreams of warm sunshine.

A grey cloud dreams of escaping darkness.

A pencil dreams of a clean piece of paper.

Categories- Adding a theme into a category.

For this, we chose to do great ‘food’ dogs

Yorkshire Pudding Terrier, Border Collie-flower, labranoodle, golden nugget retriever, bischon fries, leonburger, chewhuaha.

To end the workshop, we had to write our own poems, either those with a ABCB rhyme scheme, or a repetition scheme.

ABCB rhyme poem

I like to eat

Yorkshire Puddings with my beef

But I have to be quick

For my brother is a theif

 

I like to eat

Scrumptious chocolate flaky cake

But I only eat one slice

Or I’ve made a huge mistake

 

I like to eat

A hearty big scotch pie

But I can sometimes eat two

For I really cannot lie

 

I like to eat

All munch, this and that

But I can’t eat too much food

For i’ll get really fat.

 

Repetition poem

Teaching course

Medic course

English course

Physics course

 

History course

Spanish course

uni, uni, uni.

 

Coming away from this lecture, I have realised that poetry can be fun, both to learn and to teach. I now have more appreciation for poetry and have so many more ideas as to how to teach in the classroom and look forward to teaching it in the future.