Writing poems

"When it comes to writing, think first of the experience. What kind of experience are the children going to have, or have had, that is going to give rise to the poems? A trip, a film, another poem, a discussion about someone's dog dying, a photo, a strange object...?

Your resources are the children's own language – what they say, think, see, feel, hear, imagine. But they can also place themselves into the minds of others and/or into the minds of objects. So, for example, you can take a moment in a story that you've read together, and pick an object in the scene and ask of that object: what does it see? Hear? Think? Imagine?

The best and most important thing you can do with any poem that a child writes is either get it performed or ‘published’. Please don’t just leave it on a worksheet or in an exercise book. So think of showcasing every poem. How? Make them into poem-posters, type them up and reproduced in a cheap accessible format, perform them in assembly, get the children’s poems into the hands of parents and carers, put them up on the school website."