Lost: Poetry - Have You Seen It?

What a morning we've had with Second Class!

Since January is Poetry month and we're all finding it a bit mysterious, we decided to look into it, or rather to look for it.

We kicked off with a really interesting brainstorming session where we wondered about things like What does a poem look like? Can it be about anything? What does it do? Suggested answers, in no particular order, included: rhymes, patterns, feelings, mystical creatures, doom and death, detail, lines, breath and nervousness. These 8 year olds are on the ball.

We then had a look at what wasn't poetry. After all, what's the difference between 'The Friendly Cinnamon Bun' by Russel Hoban and the cookery book version? Or between the nursery rhyme Wiggly Woo and a few lines from the National Geographic website on earthworms?

We were now ready to sort through a big bunch of texts (some found in poetry books, some elsewhere) (some in French!), in groups, and decide what belonged to poetry what didn't.

This wasn't a test, there was no 'wrong' answer, each group could make their own decisions. It was so interesting seeing what was selected (nearly everybody went for short rhyming texts), but it was equally fascinating to see what wasn't. Shape poetry was a flop, for instance. Presentation mattered: anything illustrated with photos was automatically deemed, in some groups, as 'facts'. Some texts were selected on the basis of having illustrations of cute bunnies or nasty dinosaurs.

I then asked each group to vote for their favourite poem and tell us what they had liked in it. 'Good rhyming' was clearly high on the kids' checklist, even when they picked (as one group did) something in French (which they don't speak). Subject matter played a part, while one group liked the image that Margaret Mahy's 'My Sister' painted in their heads ('My sister is remarkably light/ (…) We use her instead of a kite'). We noted that the poem worked even if you didn't have a sister yourself. We talked about poems that were funny and poems that used repetition and made you want to dance and wriggle.

After all that thinking it was time to move around, if not wriggle and dance (but that was ok too) and launch into our poetry treasure hunt! Everyone came back with a series of words that belonged just to them and was invited to combine them in a striking image. Each kid added a stanza (usually illustrated) (sometimes a full-blown epic) to a collective piece that grew and grew, over three long hall tables.

Criminal hairdressers, colour-changing dogs, evil rubber ducks (they seem to be a thing), football-playing skeletons, officers in rubber duck costumes (told you), vampires, peacocks, the moon, and much, much more made an appearance in our crazy poem!

There was a lot in it, for everyone, (enough for 2 sessions, even), but this bunch was game and almost no-one noticed when the bell went for break!

Take a bow, poets!

The Whole Wide World Fits in My Head

It really does! Check out the amazing work done by Fourth Class as part of this project with illustrator Tarsila Kruse and yours truly.

Well done, team!

Picture this!

We had a brilliant time in First Class flexing our narrative muscles before the Easter break. We looked at ways to find ideas for new stories and got a lot of help from paintings by Mary Swanzy, Hokusai and others.

We asked lots of questions about each image, wondering what was going on, who were the people in the pictures, what they were doing, what they were saying, feeling, what happened just before, what might happen next and so on. That got us (sneakily) thinking about character, plot, setting and all the things you need to build a story. 

As for the answers to these questions… we made them up, using clues from the paintings, so that they were all right!

Then we put everything together in order and created a collective story with a little help from Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles. Who lives there? Where are they now? Will they come back? Why is it all green behind the window? Is the house in a cornfield or a jungle? Or is it that the house is tiny and it's only normal grass growing outside?... 

Here is our story, enjoy! (By the way, First Class, we're going to need a title!)

Two magic people lived in a tiny house. Their job was to get rid of human people’s rubbish. 

But one day, they got rubbish that was really dangerous to both humans and fairies: a jar of killer bugs! 

So they went off to get rid of it as far away from everyone as they could. But outside in the tall grass they were attacked by a giant poisonous snake that swallowed them up!

Inside the snake’s tummy, they opened up the jar. The killer bugs started eating the snake from the inside out. The snake died and the bugs too (because of the poison in the snake’s blood). 

They climbed out of the snake and went home, determined to have a word with the humans about producing such dangerous rubbish in the first place…

Everyone got to write their own picture-inspired story after that, and to work on the tricky issue of structure or story map. That's how we realised that some plans are better than others, with some being too boring, too simple, too complicated or too what-just-happened-? Finding the right balance is really hard, but this lot really gave it their best and did a great job!

I can't wait to see their finished pieces after the break!

Giants!

I was in Room 2 recently telling the story of Disaster David and chatting with the Junior Infants about giants, disasters and animals. We had a great time creating our very own book and we hope you'll pop in to have a look at it in the class library!