Monday, 13 June 2016

Poetry workshop 3 - preschoolers, reception, Yr 1

1. Share and enjoy a picture book.
2. Where there's a picture which is intriguing, puzzling, or curious in some way - go back to it.
3. Talk about it in ways that encourage the children to ask questions about it, e.g. saying things like 'I wonder why...' or 'I don't know why...' 'I wonder what he/she is doing there...'
4. Suggest that one question we can ask is what is the person or main thing in the question thinking and saying?
5. Suggest that everyone can think up something to ask that person or something that that person is thinking and saying and you are going to collect them up and write them up in front of everyone on a big piece of paper.
6. Suggest that at regular intervals you can all together say a 'chorus'. Something along the lines: 'I'm the mouse, weeee wee wee' (from the Gruffalo, say).
7. So, now you are making a poem made up of words, phrases and one-liners from the children 'interrupted' at regular intervals with a chorus. Try very hard to not change what a child says, so that the children can see that it's possible to write down what a child actually says.
8. Get everyone to join in getting reminders from what you're scribing and learning the poem. Make it into an enjoyable chant.
9. Various break-out sessions possible - drawing, making up your own, finding another page in a book  etc etc. It can turn into a performance for parents at the end of the day, an assembly for the rest of the school, perhaps with a powerpoint of the picture, and/or make up some music to go with it and/or some movement.
10. One page that invites this kind of work is the very last page 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' where the bear is heading off into the distance and we don't know what he or she or it is thinking! The chorus could be something very simple like 'I'm a bear, I'm a bear' or something more fun, like 'splash  splish'  for the sound of his feet in the waves...
11. Once you've done this the once,  the children will remember the shape you've made and they can make up other choruses, do it in pairs, scribe for each other etc etc.