Writing Workshops

Poetry Session Outline

The aim of each session is to model ONE particular poetry form to the class and for each child to be involved in writing using this form as a model. As I always involve EVERY CHILD, sometimes children will work individually, sometimes in pairs or in groups. Sometimes I might write a whole class rap poem with everyone contributing ideas. I now work with a range of close to eighty poetry forms including poems ideal for performance, poems able to be drawn (MANDALA) and poems using rhyme as well as non rhyming poems (BLANK VERSE), descriptive poems, narrative poems.

There is no SET session. Every session is different and dependent on what poetry form is modeled. Each session is a poetry P.D for the class teacher and I model a DIFFERENT poetry form to each class in a school.

Here is an outline of one session.

Mandala Poetry

  1. Introduction: Brief talk, 5-10 mins on my background, my passion for writing, creating, using colour and ‘Stepping out of the Square’. Brief description of poetry, or making different word patterns to ‘paint a picture’.

  2. Examples of mandalas (circular drawings), shown to class and also mandalas created by children to show how poetry can be used in this format.

  3. I model the particular form I have chosen to be used in a mandala format.

  4. i.e. Accumulative poem: As a class, we all brainstorm ideas on a topic, listing small objects on a whiteboard. i.e Fairytales… a gnomes’ shoe, a dragons’ scale, the button on a king’s coat.

  5. Each child chooses one of these items and draws it in the middle of their mandala. Each of the remaining four circles is for children to draw simple illustrations to ‘tell the story,’ or accumulative poem.

  6. After the mandalas are drawn, I model the writing form for this poem.

  7. e.g. I show the children how to condense their words, choosing rich adjectives and to write in a poetry shape. I explain that this form is called accumulative because it is an an adding on of ideas to tell a story.

  8. Example of an accumulative poem written by a 8 year old boy.

A slippery, bloody dragon’s tooth
Fell on a cracked, wooden drawbridge
Which crushed a sparkling diamond
That fell upon the delicate hand of the British queen
Then flicked into the crocodile infested moat.