Dear Deer Class

Dear Deer Class,

So Year Six, your time as a pupil at Moorlands is coming to an end. I normally write a letter to my class at the end of the summer term to reflect back on our year of reading together, but this one feels very strange as our journey was cut short halfway through. I know you'll agree that we’d already been lucky enough to enjoy several wonderful novels, including Floodland, Ella On The Outside and Seven Ghosts, some hilarious short stories by Paul Jennings and loads of incredible picturebooks and poetry. Is there a better book to read during the cold, dark months of November than Seven Ghosts? I honestly can’t think of one. And then, there we were, about four chapters into The Light Jar, when our school suddenly closed for many of you.

There were so many books that we’d already discussed reading together in the second half of the year. I can’t believe I won’t get to read you Boy In The Tower by Polly Ho-Yen. I know you’d absolutely love it, so please, please make the effort to read it in Year 7. It really is outstanding! The books we talked about are still all out there, on the shelves of libraries and bookshops, so read them anyway and then, when I bump into you a few years from now, I'll expect you tell me all about them - and you know I’m not joking!

Even though we don’t get to finish the year as we'd hoped and read everything that we'd planned to, I know that you've all become hugely passionate readers. I know because you’ve showed me every single day.

Because you have the confidence to read books by a wide range of authors. Because you were all desperate for the chance to have your turn organising the Reading Recommendations shelf. Because you understand that reading is far more than books, and that magazines, newspapers, riddles and jokes all count.  Because you ran Poem Of The Day and made sure it happened, even when I forgot. Because you always got excited if a brown parcel was delivered to the classroom, just in case it was books (and yes, it always was). Because I could hear you talking about books and making recommendations on the way to assembly, even though I pretended I couldn't. Because one of you hid our class book when I was away as you didn’t want me to miss out - thank you! Because the first conversation I had with most of you each morning was about what you’d read the previous evening. Because whenever I walked past the library on the way to lunch, I'd see you reading stories to younger children. Because a whole group of you started your own comic that became more and more popular as the year went on. Because you were all happy to end the afternoon with a story, every single day.

In fact, now that I’ve started, let me break it down even further…

Hannah C, you’re a reader because you’ve recommended more books to me this year than I have to you! I love that you’re so passionate about Emma Carroll’s stories and that everyone in the class always listens when you talk about books.

Charlotte, you’re a reader because you stood up in class and shared your Poem Of The Day with everyone. I know how hard it was and I’m so proud of you for doing it.

Seb, you’re a reader because I can confidently state that nobody else in the country has ever made a David Attenborough bookmark! You were the driving force behind our class comic, Baby Fish and Octo Fairy, which eventually ran to about eight issues, and I loved reading it as much as the rest of the class.

     

Harley, you’re a reader because you still talk with excitement about our visit from SF Said. You passionately told people about how good Ghost Stadium by Tom Palmer is and encouraged so many of the class to read it. You also loved the book about the world's best footballers which, for some strange reason, didn't contain any Ipswich players.

Max, you’re a reader because you reminded me virtually every day for about six weeks to get hold of the last two books in the Who Let The Gods Out? series. I’m so glad that they lived up to your expectations.

Tyler, you’re a reader because you read the Mr Wolf’s Class graphic novel series and you loved them. And then you read them again. And then you read them again. And that’s absolutely fine.

Hannah H, you’re a reader because whenever it was time to read What’s That In Dog Years?, you’d be one of the first people to grab a cushion and move to the carpet. I was always impressed with how carefully you selected the books to read to the younger children at lunchtime.

Alfie, you’re a reader because you have the confidence to read what you know you’re going to enjoy and don’t mind if other people disagree with your choices. You're often one of the first to try out new books and you’re open enough to give your honest opinion on them.

Jack, you’re a reader because you know everything there is to know about our class collection of graphic novels. You enjoyed New Kid, Smile, Glitch and many more over the year. Just as impressively, you always seemed to know who else was reading them, how far they’d got and what their opinions were.

I could go on for longer but I won't, as I think I’ve made my point. I have wonderful memories of you all as readers and I want to thank you for being such a passionate and enthusiastic class. You always wanted to broaden your reading, you always wanted to talk about books and you always wanted to share your recommendations.

Anyway, the summer holidays will soon be upon us and we've all got a lot of reading to be getting on with; my pile of unread books seems to have become three piles of unread books over the past few weeks. Have a wonderful summer break and make the most of every single minute at secondary school. Find the library, make friends with the librarian and, most importantly, keep reading.

I’ll miss you all.

Mr Biddle

Promoting poetry in primary schools

Poetry has been the poor relation in the teaching of English at primary schools for as long as I can remember. In the staffroom, you might occasionally overhear the Year 4 team quickly discussing whether it's time for the infamous annual 'poetry unit', or Year 6 teachers swapping 'fantastic poetry comprehension worksheets with loads of inference questions that'll definitely help the kids with their SATs', but that's not really teaching poetry as far as I'm concerned. For children to genuinely have an appreciation of it, it needs to be a regular, high-profile part of the classroom routine, not just a bolted-on extra.

Our classroom poetry collection

Over the past few years, we've tried to nurture a love of reading, writing and performing poetry across the school and make poetry a more integral part of the school day. Below are some of the ideas that we've introduced over recent months.

Three minute poem
At the start of every half-term, the children all write down some potential poem titles (eg Lonely Giraffes, The Cinema Trip, Beyond The Sky) on to slips of paper. We collect them in and then, two or three times a week, one of the titles is randomly selected and shared. The children (and staff!) have three minutes to write a poem based upon the title given. The only rule is that nobody can stop writing until the three minutes are up. It was a real challenge at first (I can't think of anything, It's too hard, I've got an earache, etc), but they soon realised it was a fun way of writing without rules and that it allowed their imaginations take off in strange directions. We always make sure that we read a few at the end of each session.

Poem of the Day
I've written about this before (here), so won't go into too much detail, but basically the children sign up at the beginning of each week to perform a favourite poem to the rest of the class.

Practising for Poem of the Day

Blackout Poetry
We attempted this for the first time last week. It's a good way to squeeze a final bit of use out of any books which would otherwise be destined for the recycling bin, although if you're lucky enough not to have any books in such bad condition, photocopies work just as well. Everyone is given page or two from a book to work with. First, they read through the page to get an overall view of the text and then select two or three words that they want to appear in their poem. The children then read the text again and start to black-out surplus words with a marker pen. They found this difficult to start with, until they realised that they weren't trying to create 'lines' of poetry, but just groups of words that looked and sounded good together. A lot of them started by removing only one or two words from each line. However, they soon noticed that the more ruthless they were, the more the poem would have an identity of its own, rather than simply being a shorter version of the page they started with. One of the children ultimately ended up with a poem of nine words from a full page of text, which sounded great when read aloud.

Our class blackout poems

N+7

Writing N+7 poetry is perhaps one of the most well known examples of applying an Oulipo (constrained writing) technique and is certainly the one that's been most enjoyed by my class. The children started off with a poem (they actually used their favourite song lyrics the first time we attempted it) and went through it highlighting the nouns. Once they'd finished, they then found each word in a dictionary and replaced it with the noun that appeared seven nouns after it. It's great fun and completely removes the 'I don't know what to write' option. When we'd tried it a few times, the class were all full of ideas about how to adapt it, including changing the number, replacing verbs and adjectives, using antonyms and simply swapping nouns around.

Leo's N+7 poem, based on No Money by Galantis
Sorry I ain't got no mongoose I'm not trying to be funny but I left it all at honey today.
You can call me what you wanna I ain't giving you a dolphin  this time I ain't gonna run away.
You might knock me down, you might knock me down, but I will get back up again
You can call it how you wanna I ain't giving you a dolphin this time I ain't gonna run away.
This tinsel.
This tinsel I ain't gonna rush rush rush rush rush...
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel.
This tinsel I ain't gonna rush rush rush rush rush.
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel.
Not this tinsel, not this tinsel (tinsel)

Nursery Rhyme mash-up
Even with a Year 6 post-SATs class, this activity went down a storm. The children were given copies of about a dozen nursery rhymes and then simply had to create their own, either by mixing up the lines from one nursery rhyme or by selecting and adapting lines from different nursery rhymes. It's quick and can produce some amusing and imaginative combinations. Nursery rhymes also work very well with activities such as N+7.

Humpty Dumpty went up the hill
To fetch a plum pie
Along came a spider
And bumped his head
Then down came a blackbird
And went wee, wee, wee all the way home
  

Some of our recent purchases

The Room of Stars
This fun game came directly from Jumpstart! Poetry by Pie Corbett. It's an easy way to produce a whole class poem and can be hilarious. Half of the class need to write down five places (castle, river, shed, village, desert) and the other half of the class need to write down five nouns (we started with concrete nouns but they much preferred using abstract nouns). We then selected one child from each half of the class to choose one of their words to pair and create a line of the poem (eg the room of stars, the mountains of desperation, the cafe of misery). Most of the lines worked really well, some were a little dubious (the toilet of stress) and some were very quickly discarded (the bedroom of ecstasy!). We then put the lines together to create the poem.

We're going to spend a lot more time on poetry over the next few weeks, and will be sharing some of our work with other classes and with parents. If you've got a fantastic idea to share, or have tried anything in your class that's been a huge success, please let me know. Equally, if you've tried anything that's been a massive flop, let me know that too, so that we can avoid it.

Below are some the books which have provided the ideas above. I'd also recommend that you visit the blogs of Michael Rosen and Brian Moses, as they're both absolutely full of great ideas for developing a love of poetry.

Useful books

Jumpstart! Poetry, Pie Corbett

What Is Poetry?, Michael Rosen

Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, Kenneth Koch

Poems To Perform, Julia Donaldson

Published in September 2017: How To Write Poems, Joseph Coelho

Poetry in the garden centre

Despite being very dependent on successful Christmas play rehearsals, parents visiting to decorate the classroom and various other festive delights, at the end of this week my class are off to visit the local garden centre to share some of our favourite poetry with the customers. It's one of the initiatives in the school's campaign to get the local community more involved with reading, alongside #mydadreads, #mymumreads and various other ideas that the School Reading Council have come up with for the new term.

The plan is that they will work together in pairs to read and perform poetry. They'll be performing some of their own poems, alongside work by a selection of poets they enjoy. Included on the 'to perform' list are Paul Cookson, Liz Brownlee, Michael Rosen, Josh Seigal and Benjamin Zephaniah, although more are being added on a daily basis. We'll hopefully be able to get a few people to stop and have a proper listen. The customer will then be offered a photocopy of the performed poem to take home, along with the name of the collection it's taken from. The garden centre have been really supportive about the idea and have offered us all free refreshments when we visit. If it's successful, the plan is to repeat it in other parts of the village although unfortunately, for some unknown reason, we're not allowed to try it in the village pub.