Books
Step out of the Square, The A-Z of Poetry Forms and Performance Poetry can be ordered by filling out this order form and mailing it with payment to the specified address.
NEW BOOK!
Step Out of the Square
2010
My latest book, Step Out of the Square: Strategies to Help Your Children Write Creatively will be available this year, 2010. I have been working in conjunction with Colin Campbell, a former secondary teacher of English and author of poetry and short story collections. We have collaborated in a combination of strategies, ideas and models that are tried and proven, and have been developed over our last decade of teaching and in my case, working in schools all over Australia. These strategies help children to think outside the ‘Square of Predictability’ and write creatively in both poetry and narrative form.
By using the examples illustrated, I am sure that you will witness the same percentage of students completing a written piece in a short time that we perceive. I now expect that 90-100% of students in a session will write a poem or a story, even students that are reluctant writers and may have never put pen to paper successfully before.
The A - Z Book of Poetry Forms
Serendip Language Arts Consultancy 2000
This book is the accumulation of my extensive work with children and teachers over past years in the area of poetry. During this time I have been modelling a wide variety of poetry and art forms in innumerable classrooms with children at all levels of primary school. I have had many opportunities to observe the understanding and writing skills that children possess relating to this genre. I have discovered that children will enjoy reading and writing poetry if they have the motivation and the skills to do so. Modelling poetry forms to children enables them to express their ideas in new and different ways and also frees them from what I have found in many cases, a preoccupation with writing poems in rhyme.
Poetry emphasizes most of the fundamental devices or techniques available to writers. Alongside the teaching of structure and pattern in prose and spelling and punctuation you can introduce children to the different structures of poetry and allow them to experiment with forms that suit their own needs of expression. Once a writer has learned these skills, he or she can choose whether or not to work within the framework of each form.
I endeavour to introduce each poetry form in an interesting and appealing way to encourage children to view language as an enjoyable aspect of their life. I have been developing a form I created based on the structure of a mandala. This form enables all children to draw a poem in concentric circles, or rule segments within a compass and is excellent for the reluctant writer who is able to express a poem visually. I have used what I term as a ‘mandala’ form with whole classes because of the diversity of ideas and expressions brought to this model by every child in the group.
Integrating language and The Arts allows children a far wider scope for their expression of ideas and thoughts and also caters for the diverse range of abilities in these areas within a class. It seems only natural to me to use percussion instruments to accompany a chant, art mediums such as paper picture frames as a presentation form for rhyming couplets and to create 3D food stalls with 3D poems for poetry writing on a food topic. I always aim to inject a positive feeling about writing poetry to a class by trying new and different approaches to this genre by integrating poetry and the Arts. Many children have a negative attitude towards language and writing and I have found that they can be disengaged from these associations by presenting them with the skills for writing and interesting art forms for the presentation of their work.
Performance Poetry
Lunasea Productions 2005
Fourteen years ago I began my journey in Poetry working with teachers and children in classrooms all over Australia. I quickly discovered that when children read out their work to a large group, it was not particularly audience friendly.
I began to research and develop poems that had a variety of rhythms, structures and poetry styles that could be accompanied by percussion instruments, movement, mime and enactment. These poems can be performed by groups or a whole grade in front of a class, as an assembly item, as a whole school ‘Poetry Performance’ or as an inclusion in a school concert. They enable every child in a grade or a school to take part.
The models in this book can be performed as published, or used as structures for substitution to enable your grade to write their own performance poem by changing the text.
I have selected these poems from only thirteen of my fifty performance residences over the years and have included examples in the appendix of some of the ‘umbrella’ themes and grade topics for whole school writing and performance.
Please contact me if you would like any further information regarding my work or the modelling of poetry forms to students.
The Hilton Hen House
Ashton Scholastic, 1987
(out of print as a hard cover book)
One evening at sunset, the hens and one mouse, said, “Farmer McMurray, we want our own house!” But the skink, roosters, sheep, guinea pigs, mice, parrots, geese, cats and rabbits all wanted rooms in the hen house too.
This delightfully illustrated book is not only a source of enjoyment for it’s rhythmical and endearing language, but also a counting book with wide mathematical possibilities.
The Hilton Hen House
Writtten by Jo Hinchliffe, Illustrated by John Forrest
Macmillan BIG BOOK PACK 2004
What Did You Take On Your Holiday?
Writtten by Jo Hinchliffe, Illustrated by John Forrest
Macmillan BIG BOOK PACK 2004
These delightfully illustrated books are not only a source of enjoyment for their rhyme and language, but are also cumulative texts with opportunities for using them for language maths.
Each BIG BOOK PACK contains:
- 1 x Big Book
- 4 x Small Books
- 1 x Teachers Notes
Security Begins at Home
Skinny Book Series — Macmillan Education
My parents are very security-conscious. Whenever we leave the house, it takes five of us at least 44 minutes to put Dad’s security devices into operation.
Dad’s pretty inventive. We thought his alarm system was foolproof.
Until last week……
Available
Rollerama
Skinny Book series — Longman Cheshire
My name is Cassidy Ferguson Bourne and I’m going to be a famous roller-skater one day.
My dad says that he’s a skater of great Excellence. But would you believe someone who doesn’t know his right foot from his left and won’t even come to the skating-rink to show you his style?
Will Dad make a fool of himself in the big concert at the Rollerama?
Will Cassidy become famous?
The Hilton Hen House
Big Book Pack — MacMillan Publishers 2004
What Did We Take on our Holiday
Big Book Pack — Macmillan Publishers 2004
This beautifully illustrated book is a delightful accumulative rhyme, a counting book with wide mathematical possibilities.
Patterns in Poetry
Oxford University Press Australia, Feb 1995 — Prep to year 8
(unfortunately now out of print)
How do I teach poetry? How do I use poetry in the classroom? Both these questions are answered in Patterns in Poetry: Divided into two parts (lower and upper primary), the twenty themes in this book have been chosen to allow teachers to use poetry forms that are referenced in the introduction to the book, e.g. Ballads are selected for the Australian theme, whereas Haiku and Diamante suit the environment theme.
Writing Poetry through the senses is an introductory unit on poetry which highlights the importance of using sight, sound, smell, touch and taste, to develop a rich language source. Each theme begins with a reproducible work sheet and include poems to be modelled, a cross reference to the poetry forms, devices and features to be explored, suggestions for discussion and practical follow-up activities.
Australia and the Olympics
A teacher resource book on a integrated curriculum — Longman Cheshire, 1996
(out of print)
The Olympic Games provide a perfect background for theme-related, exciting, relevant, and topical class activities covering all area of the curriculum.