Poems to Perform: A Classic Collection chosen by the Children's Laureate

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What can rhyme tell us? At the end of the 18th century, Blake wrote two scathing poems that denounce the abominable practice of exploiting very young children as chimney sweepers. In the 1789 poem, from Songs of Innocence, the reader’s sense of horror is heightened by the jarring contrast between the nursery-rhyme structure and the grim subject matter. The perfect rhyme scheme falters as the speaker moves from recounting the loss of his mother and being sold into bondage by his father to describing the solace an “angel” promises little Tom Dacre. An oral reading reveals how rhyme contributes to the devastating argument of this poem in ways that a silent reading cannot. All this is accompanied by some lovely Twinkl illustrations that really bring the teaching to life. This is great for engaging all your students, as fun and colourful characters can help engage more visual learners. I enjoyed the book itself, and will definitely be using it in the years to come. It took me a while longer to read as I was annotating and coming up with ideas of how I would use the poems that I enjoyed most in the classroom. The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, pride is for him,

Read, discuss and recite nature poems. Study sentence punctuation including questions and answers. Build descriptive vocabulary and use your senses to write poems. Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. It covers Performance Poetry in plenty of detail and explains exactly how to perform poetry, with loads of fun and creative techniques for the class to try.I have a personal feeling that a handful of the poems were a little older. Not so much in the way that it would be harder for children to grasp or immerse themselves in (I'm all for sharing classics and spending the time to unravel and ask questions about them), but leaning more towards it being debatable if they quite have a place in the classroom anymore. For example, "The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies" and "From a Railway Carriage". I felt they may have been put in more as a nostalgia moment for Julia Donaldson rather than their suitability.

NUGGET: Sometimes the way we speak a poem happens very instinctively. We naturally use our voices to express the meaning we feel. But when helping children prepare a performance, it’s good to be aware of the different dynamics – and for them to be familiar with some basic terms. Poems to Perform: A Classic Collection Chosen by the Children's Laureate by Julia Donaldson is has a vibrant collection of poems that are perfect to be performed by two or more voices! Julia Donaldson chose poems where children could perform them. The poems range from classics by Edward Lear, W H Auden, and Eleanor Farjeon, to contemporary work by Michael Rosen, John Agard, and Clare Bevan. Some poems lend themselves to movement. A choral speaking performance might involve some gesture or other moves. Or, as an exercise, a group could work on a mimed version, or a set of freeze frames. Former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, gathers together the best children’s poetry from Agard to Zephaniah in thiscollection. From Grace Nichol's poem about her Caribbean Gran visiting England to Rosen's own hilarious account of his Dad's intolerance to 'The Noise', There are poems to entertain everyone. A brilliant book for dipping iin…The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and from the heave of the water,