Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

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 Teaching
Poetry in the
Primary School
Perspectives for a New Generation

Dennis Carter
First published in Great Britain by David Fulton Publishers 1998

This edition published 2012 by Routledge

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711 Third Avenue, New York, N Y 10017 U SA

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Note: The right o f Dennis Carter to be identified as the author o f this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents A ct 1988.

Copyright © Dennis Carter 1998

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ISB N 1-85346-567-4

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points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
Contents

Acknowledgements vli

1 Children and Poetry 1

Poetry and the National Curriculum 1
The minds of young children 2
Poetry in the primary school 3
The work of Clwyd Poetry Project 5
Poetry and the National Literacy Project 7
Perspectives offered by this book 9
References 11

2 Ways of Working with Poetry 12

Listening 13
Speaking 13
Reading 14
Memorising 15
Creatively conversing and conferencing 16
Expressively engaging 17
Composing or making poems of one’s own 19
Performing, exhibiting and publishing 22
References 26

3 Planning, Assessment, Recording and Reporting 28

The making of choices 28
Aims and organisation 31
The learning objectives for a scheme of work 33
Assessing children’s poetry-making 38
The literacy hour and beyond 42
References 45
4 literacy Hour Lessons 46
Interpreting the National Literacy Strategy’s Framework 46
The literacy hour and the Clwyd Poetry Project model 48
Preparing for and conducting a poetry literacy hour 48
A week’s lessons for Reception 50
A week’s lessons for Year One 52
A week’s lessons for Year Two 55
A week’s lessons for Year Three 59
A week’s lessons for Year Four 63
A week’s lessons for Year Five 68
A week’s lessons for Year Six 73
References 83

5 Dreams and the Imagination 85

Children’s thinking 85
Reverie and imagination 86
Developing imagination in the classroom 88
Using poets’ work 91
Projects for Key Stage 1 93
Projects for Key Stage 2 105
References 115

6 Interpretations of the Material World 116

Poets transforming the world 116
Children and the world 116
Developing response to the world 118
Using poets’ work 120
Projects for Key Stages 1 and 2 122
References 132

Appendices 133
I: Secondary texts for literacy hour lessons 133
II: A list of other valuable poems 141
III: A list of useful anthologies 143

Index 145
Acknowledgments

Firstly, acknowledgments are due to the children who, over more than thirty years,
have helped me to shape my present ideas about the teaching of poetry in the primary
school, particularly those in Tarvin County Primary School, Cheshire (1969-1973);
Redhills Combined School, Exeter, Devon (1973-1975); and Taliesin Junior School,
Clwyd (1976-1988). I have deep and powerful memories of the children and of the
locations of their schools, where I enjoyed so many extraordinary moments as a
teacher.
Thanks are also due to the children and teachers involved in the pilot projects of
Clwyd Poetry Project (1993-1995) from the following schools: C lw yd- Ysgol Dunawd,
Bangor-on-Dee; Border Brook CP School, Bronington VP School, Eyton VP School,
Hanmer VP School, Isycoed VP School, Madras CP School, Penley; Gwersyllt CP
School, Gwernaffield CP School, Mynydd Isa Junior School, St. David’s RC Primary
School, Mold; St. Mary’s RC Primary School, Flint; Dee Road Infant School, Connah’s
Quay; Ewloe Green CP School, Wood Memorial CP School, Saltney; Ysgol Estyn, Hope;
Taliesin Junior School, Shotton; Gwynedd CP School, Flint; Ysgol-y-Ddol, Rhydymwyn;
Ysgol Croes Atti, Flint; Ysgol Glanrafon, Mold; Ysgol Gwenffrwd, Holywell and
Northop Hall CP School. Cheshire - Huntington CP School, Chester. G w yn edd- Ysgol
Cadnant, Ysgol Gyffin and Ysgol Bodlondeb, Conwy. To this list should be added
Grafton CP School, Shropshire, where I have worked on dissemination projects since
the Clwyd Poetry Project’s research and development phase was completed.
Acknowledgements are also due to the sponsors of Clwyd Poetry Project, particularly
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, Wales Arts
Council, North West Arts Board and Delyn Borough Council.
I am very grateful to my co-workers on Clwyd Poetry Project, particularly the poets
Rose Flint and Esyllt Maelor, the visual artist Ian Douglas, the dancer Louise Katerega,
the musician Alison Wright and the drama teacher Pam Courtenay; and to Gruffydd
Roberts, who co-ordinated the Project’s work in the Welsh language.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Catherine, for her inspiring support
throughout my work, particularly in her role as teacher in Gwersyllt CP, Huntington CP
and Grafton CP schools.
Permission to include published poems and extracts is acknowledged to the
following:
‘Wild Iron’ by Allen Curnow, published by Carcanet Press Limited in Early Days Yet -
Collected Poem s; ‘in Just- is reprinted from Complete Poem s 1904-1962, by E.E.
Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, by permission of W.W.Norton & Company,
copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust and George James
Firmage; ‘The Sea’ by James Reeves is reproduced by permission of John Johnson
(Authors’ Agent) Limited, for the author; ‘Until I Saw the Sea’ from I Feel the Sam e Way
by Lilian Moore, copyright © 1967 Lilian Moore, © renewed 1995 Lilian Moore Reavin,
reprinted by permission of Marian Reiner for the author; sixteen lines from ‘The Ugly
Child’ from The Secret B rother by Elizabeth Jennings, published by Carcanet Press and
sixteen lines from ‘Dream Poem’ from Collected Poem s by Charles Causley, published
by Macmillan are reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Limited; lines
from ‘the african pot’ by Fhazel Johennese from Voices fro m Within are reprinted by
permission of Jonathan Ball Publishers (Pty) Ltd; ‘Autumn Shone Forth’ by Alesksay
Vorobyovin is reproduced by permission of Forest Books; ‘Hide and Seek’ by Walter de
la Mare from The Com plete Poem s o f Walter de la M are is reproduced by permission of
The Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare, and the Society of Authors as their
representative; ‘Overheard on a Saltmarsh’ by Harold Monro is reproduced by
permission of Mrs F. McGregor; ‘Ducks’ Ditty’ from The Wind in the Willows by
Kenneth Grahame, copyright © The University Chest, Oxford, is reproduced by
permission of Curtis Brown, London; ‘The Door’ by Miroslav Holub is reproduced by
permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
 'Who alive can say,
"Thou art no poet - mayst not tell thy dreams"?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

John Keats, 'The Fall of Hyperion', Canto 1

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Chapter One

Children and Poetry

‘When we are children, people show us so many things that we lose the profound
sense of seeing. Seeing and showing are phenomenologically in violent antithesis.
And just how could adults show us the world they have lost! They know; they
think they know; they say they know.........They demonstrate to the child that the
earth is round, that it revolves around the sun. And the poor dreaming child has to
listen to all that! What a release for your reverie when you leave the classroom to
go back up the side hill, your side hill! What a cosmic being the dreaming child is!’
(Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reveridy

Poetry and the National Curriculum

This book has grown out of the work of the Clwyd Poetry Project and, in particular, its
dissemination book, The Pow er to Overwhelm2 which was published in April 1997. In it
I attempt to reconcile what some observers would call the irreconcilable. On the one
hand there are the demands made by poetry, the spirit of creativity and the nature and
needs of children. On the other there are those made by the Education Reform Act of
1988 with its National Curriculum and, more recently, by the National Literacy Strategy
(NLS) with its ‘Literacy Hour’. Unless these contrary forces a re reconciled, however, the
future of poetry in schools and, more importantly, the future development of children’s
sensibilities are grim indeed. In order to make such a reconciliation here in this book,
those two forces need to be examined.
The story begins in late 1992, by which time the National Curriculum for English was
in operation but had not yet been reviewed by Sir Ron Dearing. I launched the Clwyd
Poetry Project at that time as a research and development project in the teaching of
poetry in primary schools. It aimed to review current practice and to broaden
approaches, and it started from the hypothesis that the demands of the more formal
aspects of National Curriculum English were driving teachers to neglect the subject’s
aesthetic elements.
The 1995 (Dearing) version of the National Curriculum for English refers to poetry
here and there, but fails to consider its potential contribution to the development of
pupils’ language, sensibilities and dream-power. So, no rationale for the place and
value of poetry in children’s education appears in it. Indeed, an examination of the
Level Descriptions shows that poetry was not in the minds of those who composed
2 Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

them. The descriptions for ‘Writing’, for instance, always refer to prose, as here at Level
4: ‘Pupils are beginning to use grammatically complex sentences, extending meaning.’3
The reference here is to pupils’ handling of syntax, which is the stuff of prose.
Poetry, however, is written - and extends meaning to its audience - in more than
grammatically complex structures. But the Level Description here makes no reference
to pupils’ use of imagery, rhythm, rhyme, personification, alliteration or any other
poetic device. It goes on to indicate how pupils ought to spell, punctuate and do their
handwriting.
To neglect poetry in this way, within the legally-binding manual for primary teachers’
work in English, is to assign it minor status. Poetry is treated there as a fringe activity,
one that is unlikely to figure in the ‘main findings’ or the ‘key issues’ of an Ofsted
report. It was, therefore, one main aim of the work of the Clwyd Poetry Project to claim
a major status for poetry in the primary school.

The minds o f young children

The mind of a young child is a medium with infinite possibilities. It possesses its unique
properties, drawn from its birthrights and experiences. These are beginning to make
shapes. It is a mind that is acutely tuned, and it uses words acutely - as when a three-
year-old draws Daddy on a pad, lifts the page, sees the imprint on the next page and
calls it ‘a bruise of Daddy’. What I want to emphasise by this example is the fact that a
child is born with a poetic voice, which is manifest very early. It is there, for instance, in
an infant’s need to play with a cry or with bodily rhythms. It is there in the toddler’s
instinct to make a metaphorical comparison as a way of experimenting with sound and
sense. When, for instance, another three-year-old calls sunlight streaming through a
glass ‘an angel’, she is exercising her poetic voice.
The acute tuning between a young child’s mind and language endures well in early
life. So, by the time children come to school, their teachers’ concern should not be
focused exclusively on introducing them to poetry but should be equally aimed at
letting loose each child’s poetic voice into a poetic environment. This means not only
providing poetry books and lessons but also encouraging an excited awareness of the
play of language. The poetic voice exists as much in conversations as in the business of
writing a poem; in the perceptions brought in from street and field as in great works of
literature.
Any work of literature, whether it be written by Shakespeare or a six-year-old child,
is made from a dynamic interaction between the writer (or speaker), the world and
words. But the post-Dearing document and the NLS ‘Framework’ treat all the results of
such interactions as mere language units for study. And the great weakness of such an
approach to English, which seeks to describe exactly what children should be able to
do at each level of their development, is that language is treated simply as a tool, and
literature simply as material on which to hone it. In these two documents no aim is
poetic. The whole approach is driven by programmed functions. Hence, literature is
seen as having value in its fixed meanings and uses rather than in its openness to
personal interpretation and response. But poetry has a far greater value than this view
 Children and Poetry 3

implies. The poetic voice in action may be more important for the future of society than
most kinds of prose. This is because the poet is doing something quite different from
the writer of, say, the instructions accompanying a fitted kitchen assembly kit.
When the eleven-year-old writer of the following poem, Neil, presented it to me in
this ‘first draft’ form one morning many years ago, with pride and excitement, he was
participating, at his tender age, in an ancient process by which language is replenished
and renewed. Here he writes about some of the effects of the miners’ strike of 1972:

Tower Cuts'
Electricity pulsates through cables,
beating in time with the turning generator.
Click! The terrible, exciting switch
that cuts out light and warmth.
Tarvin blacks out, candles light up rooms.
A candle-lit pork sausage dinner.
Grumblings as 'Dr Who' blacks out.
Washing up done in a meagre flame.
Fullup, fullup, the cards smack on the table.
'Hearts for trumps'.
Cards are played. Lost. Lost. Won.
The games go on.
The flames burn at the wick.
Wax slowly diminishes, dripping balls
of heat fall into the plate.
Feet sound on stairs, water in the basin.
Then sleep snores.

The poetic voice here re-enacts experience through the medium of language and
makes of it something newly real. The value - indeed, the very existence - of such a
process, as part of children’s education in school, is insidiously undermined by the
approaches imposed by the post-Dearing document and the NLS’s ‘Framework’. This
book is dedicated to its defence.

Poetry in the prim ary school

In school, language development starts with the children’s own language - the noises
they make, the words they speak, the stories they tell. It is a foolish teacher who thrusts
too much other language on them (even in the form of poems) too early. Children need
to feel a sense of affirmation for the language and its stories that they already carry with
them. Then they find it easier to absorb new language, new stories, new sounds and
new worlds.
So, in seeking to develop a poetic way with language, a teacher needs to respond to
the child as much as the child responds to the teacher. It is a two-way process, always.
But the wise teacher will introduce plenty of poetry into the process, regularly
involving the children in hearing it, reading it, writing it, speaking it and engaging with
it in other ways. The essential aim is to foster each child’s sense of poetry as sounds in
4 Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

the air as well as words on the page, and their sense of themselves as being dreamers,
readers and m akers of poetry.
Collections of books in primary schools are dominated by stories and non-fiction.
The poetry section is often small, with a few books of comic verse well-thumbed.
Ideally, there should be greater provision, so that a child would be almost as likely to
encounter a book of poems as a book of stories or information. The same can be said
of displays in school. In the plethora of signs, sayings, instructions and pupils’ work,
poetry is often absent. It deserves a more significant position in the visual life of
schools, a number of locations where children can reflect on a piece of poetry, places
for them to ‘stand and stare’.
One of our major duties is, of course, the teaching of reading; and reading is more
than just decoding. In a written text there is always a complex structure of awareness,
attitude, know-how and sensitivity. In any poem this structure is specially important:
and it is essential that we awaken children’s feeling for it as we teach them to read a
poem as well as how to decode, to read stories and how to use information books.
Reading a poem should arouse feelings and opinions in a child and lead to the need to
express and share them. So the teaching of poetry should involve the young reader in a
wide variety of experiences - not only in reflective reading but also in recitation, in
enactment through dance and drama, in setting lyrics to tunes, in painting imagery and
in playing with ideas as well as weighing the meanings in words.
In close partnership with the teaching of reading is the teaching of writing. But,
again, the highest priority here should be on equipping children with a vital means to
develop their own dreamings, thoughts and feelings into active communications.
Whilst being of increasing importance to the development of civilisation, writing is
basically a form of expression. Everybody needs it and when children gain it they
become significantly empowered members of their culture and civilisation. Without it
they are reduced, and the NLS is quite right to lay so much emphasis on raising
standards of achievement in writing as well as in reading.
However, there are grave dangers in an approach to teaching writing which is so
obsessively focused on prose and, in particular, transactional prose. Of course, we all
need to be able to negotiate the practicalities of our lives through writing as well as
through talking. Yet there is a stronger demand within us to find our own characteristic
voice in writing. Standardisation may oil the machinery of everyday life with its needs to
earn a living and provide for our families, but without that sense of our own individual
worth in the world life itself is reduced. One would only have to listen to the despairing
voices of individuals calling the Samaritans to realise how profoundly important this is.
Primary schools have a unique influence in this respect, far and above any other
single institution outside of the family. An individual’s sense of selfness and of self
value develops early and, if abused in the primary years, its recovery requires a great
deal of investment. Writing, perhaps more than any other single skill, offers children in
their primary schools the most powerful way of developing this sense of selfness and
self value, but not if writing consists merely of answering questions and working
entirely within the frame of reference provided by others.
 Children and Poetry 5

The self-expression movement of the sixties and seventies in writing may have got
the balance between the transactional and the expressive wrong in favour of the
expressive, but now we are in danger of doing the same thing the other way round.
Children, therefore, demand more than exercises and models provided by other
people’s texts. A classroom where good writing takes place will accommodate this but
also the habitual opportunity to give voice to the dreamings from children’s inner
worlds and to the world which they share with each other.
For the teacher, the most important single feature in teaching reading and writing in
the ways implied above is to be reflexive. In other words, teachers need to develop the
habit of giving and receiving, receiving and giving, by which a reciprocal way of
working is established with children. At times this may even mean relinquishing your
prepared lesson because the children come to you full of something else. Daring to do
that, on occasion, is a vital part of teaching poetry, which is a mutual, imaginative
engagement in meaning-through-language that transcends the mere drilled study of
poems written down in a book or, worse still, the filling in of cloze procedure
worksheets. Unfortunately, reflexiveness is somewhat undermined by the NLS’s
proposals for the ‘literacy hour’ in which short bursts .of whole class teaching are
organised around longer periods of group and individual work. However, it will be in
the teacher’s use of her own time in that longer period where her reflexiveness will
count.

The w ork o f Clwyd Poetry Project

With such attitudes towards poetry and with these aims in mind, in late 1992 I
attempted to design a more comprehensive approach to poetry in primary schools than
the one promoted by current English regulations. This consists of a framework of eight
modes of encounter between children and poetry as follows:
1. Listening: children listening to teachers and others reading poetry in a range of
situations.
2. Speaking: speaking or singing poems or songs learnt by heart and the reading out
loud from scripts.
3. Reading: poetry for teaching reading skills and for developing reading as a leisure
activity.
4. Memorising: learning poetry by heart for a variety of classroom and whole-school
performances.
5. Creatively conversing and conferencing: talking to learn or the exploration of
meaning in poems by groups of readers, sometimes in classroom ‘conferences’.
6. Expressively engaging: exploring meaning in poetry through expressive response in
the artforms of dance, drama, music, visual art and writing.
7. Composing or making poems of one’s own: the oral composition of poems, including
young children’s spontaneous poetic utterances, and composition through writing.
8. Performing/exhibiting/publishing: making work public through a wide range of
performances, displays in exhibition spaces around the school and the publication
of children’s poetry in magazine and book form.4
6 Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

Three surveys were carried out during 1992 and 1993: of poets working in primary
schools in the United Kingdom; of the primary schools of Wales; and of the local
education authorities in the United Kingdom. I believe that, taken together, these may
amount to the largest survey of poetry in primary schools ever carried out. The main
findings from the surveys are as follows:
• Schools and local education authorities believe that poetry deserves a higher status
in primary schools. However, only a minority of schools have a policy for the use of
poetry and the poets believe that the status of poetry is rather low, even though they
are invited to work in schools. Teachers often leave the poets to ‘get on with it’.
• Most believe that the 1988 Act had only marginal effects on the status of poetry in
primary schools. Of these, half believe it was positive because of greater focus
provided by INSET, and the other half believe it was ‘squeezed’ by the greater
demands on the curriculum.
• Poets and teachers develop poetry in five ways: listening, speaking, writing,
discussing and performing, but not in memorising and expressively engaging. Poetry
is infrequently used in cross-curricular work and rarely linked to other arts work. It is
interesting to note that the reading of poetry is not featured. Presumably, the activity
of reading is ‘taken for granted’.
• Poets report that children are mostly unused to writing poetry, are unfamiliar with
poetic forms and mainly know only the names of contemporary comic poets.
Teachers report that they introduce their pupils to a wider range of genres and poets
and teach them to write it.
• Poets teach children to write using the following processes: talking; reading from
their work; playing imagination and word games; acting as scribes for group
composition; introducing a range of stimuli for individual writing; and stressing the
importance of redrafting and of performance. The teachers use a simpler process
based on class lessons on themes such as children, the seasons, the natural world,
special occasions, fantasy and space. Neither the poets nor the teachers usually
provide first-hand experiences. They tend to base their work on teaching simple
forms such as the acrostic and on the themes.
• There was a fair amount of INSET on poetry immediately after 1988, since when it
has lessened. Although many schools do invite poets to work with their children, the
majority do not. Children’s Book Week sometimes features a poet. Local education
authority officers had difficulty in naming outstanding schools and teachers of poetry
in their areas.
What should be remembered here is that these findings are based on those poets, LEAs
and schools who care enough about poetry to fill in the questionnaires. In other words
these findings are from the more motivated sources of opinion. The conclusions which
can be drawn are mixed, but generally point to a patchy and declining role for poetry
in primary schools, in which the following key elements are largely missing:
 Children and Poetry 7

• Full engagement with a variety of poetic forms and poets of high quality from a
range of cultures, including our own. Comic poetry is of great value but so too are
the great lyric poetry, dramatic poetry and ballads.
• A central role for poetry in the teaching of reading. For instance, why is rhyming
poetry and other heavily rhythmic poetry not more widely used to develop phonic
skills? Along with a more consistent provision of poetry in children’s general reading
diets?
• A key role for poetry within the whole curriculum. Although teachers of Key Stage 1
pupils reported using counting rhymes for teaching aspects of number, the value of
poetry to make facts and experiences more memorable is overlooked.
• A wider range of modes for children to engage poetry through. Listening, speaking
and writing are the main ones. A fuller engagement with poetry through, for
instance, the arts would surely enrich the children’s own writing as well as their all­
round experience of poetry.5

Poetry and the National Literacy Project

So far I have presented the somewhat gloomy picture of poetry in decline in our
primary schools since 1988 and offered, through the Clwyd Poetry Project’s eight
modes, a model for its resurgence. However, with the implementation of the National
Literacy Strategy’s ‘Framework’ in September 1998, the situation is set to change yet
again. Much of this book will offer students and teachers strategies to avoid any further
decline, and ways of seizing the literacy hour as an opportunity to prove that poetry
has a unique and powerful role to play in developing children’s literacy.
Firstly, however, we need critically to examine what the NLS is proposing to force
onto primary teachers, particularly in England. NLS was established as the National
Literacy Project in September 1996 by the Department for Education and Employment
with the aim ‘to raise standards of literacy in primary schools in line with national
expectations’. Most teachers will know that this simply means the improvement of
children’s performances in the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in English at Key
Stages 1 and 2. Indeed, the introduction to the final version of the ‘Framework for
teaching’ does not even attempt to hide the fact when it says, ‘in 2002, 80% of 11-year-
olds are expected to reach Level 4 or above in the Key Stage 2 English tests.’6 The bad
news for poetry here is that poetry has - so far - rarely been tested in either the reading
or the writing tasks of SATs.
The three more specific aims of the NLS, which are to be achieved by the year 2002,
are to raise these standards by:
i. improving the school’s management of literacy through target-setting linked to
systematic planning, monitoring and evaluation by headteachers, senior staff and
governors;
ii. setting clear expectations bench-marked in a term-by-term structure;
iii. improving the quality of teaching through more focused literacy instruction and
effective classroom management.7
8 Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

Judging by the draft ‘Framework’ produced by the NLP in October 1997, the Project
team had problems with poetry, which clearly did not fit into their categories of
‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-fiction’. This stemmed partly from a lack of clarity about poetry in the
National Curriculum orders for English, in which it appears rather as a kind of fair
weather visitor to primary education rather than as a fixed and reliable means of
developing children’s literacy. This leads to a confusion about its nature and its value.
Consequently, in both the draft and final ‘Framework’ poetry is ‘lumped together’ with
fiction.8
The largest part of the ‘Framework’ consists of ‘The Termly Objectives’, which are
divided into three categories: ‘Word level work’, ‘Sentence level work’ and ‘Text level
work’. Apart from the use of rhyme for developing phonics and spelling in the early
stages of Key Stage 1, there is no attempt to include specific poetry features in these
‘Termly Objectives’. There is no ‘Verse level work’ and the main thrust of word,
sentence and text level work is instrumental. In other words, even when poetry is
included in an objective it is there largely to serve cognitive purposes rather than the
poetic. For instance, take this from Year 4, Term 1 text level work: ‘7 compare and
contrast poems on similar themes’.6 Now this is conceived entirely as an objective
exercise with little thought for the interior worlds of the poems that might be
assembled around the themes. The outcome of such an objective is very likely to be
one which skirts around the edges of poems without ever plumbing any depths.
However, an astute believer in poetry can interpret such objectives in terms of the
affective needs of children and the interior worlds of the poems. So, for instance, by
concentrating on the individual sound of the poems compared and the specific
meanings they convey before making comparisons the children will develop very
different attitudes and experiences of the poems. The process of making such
comparisons will then be pitched at a more profound level, which will serve poetry
well. The key danger here then is that poetry may be engaged narrowly by the
children, and what I attempt in this book is to show teachers and student teachers how
to avoid this.
Let us here also deal with that rather crude categorisation of poetry with fiction. In
his letter to me earlier this year John Stannard, Director of the National Literacy
Strategy, writes, ‘........ the reason for not distinguishing poetry under a second heading
is simply because we would have to write quite a number of our objectives more than
once in the Framework which would make it clumsy and probably less manageable for
teachers.’9 One has to admire the honesty of Stannard here, but it does reveal a marked
ignorance of the difference between poetry and fiction. It also leads to the objectives
for each term’s work being unwieldy and lacking in an apparent rationale either for
poetry or fiction.
The lack of a rationale for poetry gives the document a piecemeal appearance as if
those involved in its compilation made their decisions acting upon personal
preferences and whims. Consequently, for instance, Year 4, Term 3 becomes the time
when a child must learn about Japanese haiku poetry, one of the world’s more subtle
poetic forms. The child does so at the same time as learning about ‘thin poems’ -
whatever they are! The great poet, Basho, was ancient by the time he mastered this
 Children and Poetry 9

most consummate of poetic forms, haiku. Here it becomes just another ‘device’ in a
long list, including such bastard forms as the cinquain. Much poetry has been packed
into the ‘Framework’ between draft and final versions and this is to be applauded. But
much of this is ill-considered and the logic behind it contestable. Teachers must use it
to their advantage rather than being intimidated by it.6
The very inclusion of poetry with fiction implies that they are part of the same genre
and sends out many of the wrong signals about the nature of poetry. We know that
poetry does tell stories, but it does so in uniquely different ways than does prose
fiction. This is not to denigrate prose fiction, but to underline poetry’s very different
purpose. The scope of poetry is wider than that of any other kind of writing. Yes, it tells
stories, but yes it also plays games with language, reflects the poet’s hopes, fears, hates,
loves, responses to the world and to dreams. Poetry does just about everything
language can do, and even when telling stories its focus is different from that of prose
fiction. For instance, when Wordsworth tells us about the leech gatherer or the old
Cumberland beggar he tells us as much about his own philosophy as of the fates of
those two characters. Furthermore, these are very different stories from Coleridge’s
‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, which is pure fiction; and all three of these stories are
told through an entirely different medium than, for instance, Jane Austen’s N orthanger
A bbey or Tobias Smollett’s H um phrey Clinker from the same period.
A similar misunderstanding informs the objectives for writing composition. The
emphasis throughout these sections in the termly objectives is on the child as a sort of
apprentice literary critic and imitator. There is no sense anywhere that the child has a
unique vision and potential voice which is worth sharing in its own right. The balance
between child as consumer of the work of others and maker of her/his own work is
massively tilted towards the former. I hope to show in this book how subtle that
balance must be and how it can be achieved.
So, teachers will need to be most astute in their reading and implementation of the
NLS ‘Framework’ if they care for poetry and their children’s aesthetic developments
through language. However, I also wish to demonstrate that the highly concentrated
focus on literacy in the NLS ‘Framework’ can lead to a genuine and strong engagement
with poetry in our primary schools.

Perspectives offered by this book

My first perspective, which informs all I write in this book, follows up the lines from
Keats’s great poem ‘The Fall of Hyperion’ - quoted at the front of the book - with its
egalitarian claim in favour of ‘every man’ (person) having visions to tell. Keats argues
here that in order to tell these visions as a poet ‘every man’ needs the right kind of
education in the ‘mother tongue’ and to be ‘well nurtured’ in it. I have to say that
throughout my career I have believed and frequently had it confirmed that every child
has visions worth telling. I have sought to nourish this truth and nurture every child’s
use of the mother tongue. This book seeks to establish a pedagogy, which I later call
‘comprehensive’, which is capable of achieving this fundamental aim for our children.
This is not to suggest that every child is likely to become a poet in the traditional
10 Teaching Poetry in the Primary School

sense, with books of his or her verse on Waterstone’s bookshelves. Rather it is to claim
that all children are capable of speaking and writing their visions powerfully and
beautifully if we, who are charged with the duty of nurturing their use of the mother
tongue, give the right kind of assistance. Many will argue that we are passing through a
time when teachers are being prevented from doing so. This book tries to show how
such nurturing can be achieved even at such a time.
Chapter Two of the book presents the channels through which such assistance may
be provided for children. Eight such channels or modes are identified. These are
introduced above but developed in much greater detail - and with examples - in
Chapter Two. A particularly strong emphasis is placed on the lesser used modes of
‘memorising’, ‘conferencing’ and ‘publishing’ for which a broader definition is provided.
Chapter Three is about the practical steps that can be taken to open up these
channels for children, from the whole business of choosing poems to share to the
assessment of children’s achievement. There is also a set of aims for poetry and an
extensive set of eighteen learning objectives which offer a strong basis for a school’s
entire scheme of work for poetry from Reception through to Year 6. This is followed by
suggestions for attempting the vexed question of making assessments of children’s
written poetry. The orders for English have no statements in the writing levels which
address the writing of poetry. This book does and puts them to use with actual
examples of children’s poems. Chapter three concludes with practical advice for
negotiating a way through the literacy hour using poetry in ways which make it
intellectually challenging and exciting.
Chapter Four develops the most comprehensive range of materials for teaching
poetry in the literacy hour that has yet been produced. There is highly detailed advice
about preparing for and conducting a poetry literacy hour and material for a week’s
lessons for each year group from Reception through to Year 6. Each of these sets of
materials includes suggestions for taking the work beyond the literacy hour into the arts
of dance, drama, art and music.
In Chapter Five the book returns the reader to the minds, imaginations and dreaming
potential of children, using the work of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard as a
touchstone. It attempts to locate the first place for the development of literacy inside
the heads of children rather than outside them in some office in the DfEE or National
Literacy Strategy premises in Reading. It argues in favour of reverie or ‘day-dreaming’ as
an influential power in shaping the emerging reader and writer and, again, shows how
students and teachers can put such concepts into practice even on a four-week
teaching practice! It argues for the critical value of poets’ works in this process and
demonstrates how this can be achieved.
The theme of Chapter Six of the book is children’s experience of the world about
them. Referring to the poetry of Seamus Heaney in his collection Seeing Things, it
argues that, like the other arts, poetry can transform the ordinary. The transformation of
the ordinary into something amazing, it claims, is also a natural thing for children to do.
Here, ways and means of focusing this tendency in children are outlined and
demonstrated right down to more actual lesson outlines. The use of poets’ work, again,
is shown to be of vital importance in the whole process.
 Children and Poetry 11

The book’s appendices supplement all the practical detail in its main parts with lists
of farther poems to use and books of poetry for the classroom and library.
The publishers, David Fulton, and I have wished to create here a book which will
motivate students and teachers to raise the profile of poetry in their schools, excite their
children through it and make it a vital tool for developing literacy.

References
1. Bachelard, G. (1969) The Poetics o f Reverie, Beacon Press, Boston, USA.
2. Carter, D. (1997) The Power to Overwhelm, Clwyd Poetry Project (CPP), Mold.
3. DfEE (1995) English in the National Curriculum, HMSO, London.
4. Carter, D. (1997) The Power to Overwhelm, Clwyd Poetry Project (CPP), Mold.
5. Carter, D. (1994) i. (February) A survey of the experiences encountered by and the attitudes of
poets who visitprim ary schools in the United Kingdom, CPP, Mold. ii. (November) A survey o f
the value placed on poetry in primary schools by local education authorities in the United
Kingdom, CPP, Mold. iii. (December) A survey o f attitudes towards and use made ofpoetry in
the prim ary schools o f Wales, CPP, Mold.
6. Stannard, J. (1998ii) The National Literacy Strategy, Framework fo r Teaching, The National
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7. Stannard, J. (1997) Frameworkfo r Literacy {draft), The National Literacy Project, Reading.
8. Stannard (1997 and 1998ii). - see 7. and 6.
9. Stannard, J. (1998i), Letter of 20.1.98, National Literacy Project, Reading.
Children and Poetry
Bachelard, G. (1969) The Poetics of Reverie , Beacon Press, Boston, USA. 2.
Carter, D. (1997) The Power to Overwhelm , Clwyd Poetry Project (CPP), Mold.
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Carter, D. (1997) The Power to Overwhelm , Clwyd Poetry Project (CPP), Mold.
Carter, D. (1994) i. (February) A survey of the experiences encountered by and the attitudes of poets who visit primary schools in the United Kingdom , CPP, Mold. ii. (November) A survey of the value placed on poetry in primary schools by local education authorities in the United Kingdom, CPP, Mold. iii. (December) A survey
of attitudes towards and use made ofpoetry in the primary schools of Wales, CPP, Mold.
Stannard, J. (1998ii) The National Literacy Strategy, Framework for Teaching , The National Literacy Project, Reading.
Stannard, J. (1997) Framework for Literacy (draft), The National Literacy Project, Reading.
Stannard (1997 and 1998ii). - see 7. and 6.
Stannard, J. (1998i), Letter of 20.1.98, National Literacy Project, Reading.

Ways of Working with Poetry

Steiner, G. (11. 1. 98) Review in The Observer of Vendler, H. (1998) The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets , Belknap, Harvard.
Ibid.
See Norman, K. (1992) Thinking Voices , Hodder and Stoughton, London.
See Britton, J. (1970) Language and Learning , Penguin, Harmondsworth.
See Barnes, D. (1976) From Communication to Curriculum , Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Bachelard (1969) The Poetics of Reverie , Beacon Press, Boston, USA.
Auden, W.H. (1954), Secondary Worlds , Faber, London.
Carter, D. (1994) Imagined Worlds Project Report , CPP, Mold.
Heaney, S. (1995) ‘Feeling into Words’, The Redress of Poetry , Faber, London.
Curnow, A. ‘Wild Iron’ in Heaney, S. and Hughes, T. (Eds) (1982) The Rattle Bag , Faber, London.
See Clegg, A.B. (Ed.) (1964) The Excitement of Writing , Chatto and Windus, London.
Ascribed to Clegg, A.B. Source unknown.
See, for instance, Brownjohn, S. (1980) Does it have to rhyme? Hodder and Stoughton, London.
Hughes, T. (1967) Poetry in the Making , Faber, London.
Ibid.
Ross, M. (1993) Assessing Achievement in the Arts , Open University Press, Buckingham.
Ibid.
Hughes, T. ‘Spring Nature Notes’ in (1976) Season Songs , Faber, London.
Hubbell, P. ‘Shadows’ in Summerfield, G. (Ed.) (1970) funior Voices 1, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Anonymous , ‘I asked the little boy who cannot see……….’in Harvey, A. (Ed.) (1991) Shades of Green , Julia MacRae Books, London.

Planning, Assessment, Recording and Reporting

Heaney, S. (1994) ‘Frontiers of Writing’, The Redress of Poetry , Faber, London.
Ibid.
Hourd, M.L. (1949) The Education of the Poetic Spirit , Heinemann, London.
cummings, e.e. (1953) ‘in Just-’ in Tulips and chimneys , Liveright, New York.
Juhasz, F. , translated by Wevill, D. ‘The Birth of the Foal’ in Heaney, S. and Hughes, T. (Eds.) (1984) The Rattle Bag , Faber, London.

Literacy Hour Lessons

Stannard, J. (1998ii) The National Literacy Strategy, Framework for Teaching , The National Literacy Project, Reading.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘Storm’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘It was Cat’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Anonymous , ‘Key to the Kingdom’ in Opie, I. and Opie, P. (Eds) The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book , OUP, Oxford.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘Blessings’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘Up here’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Anonymous , ‘I saw a peacock’ in Opie, I. and Opie, P. (Eds) The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book , OUP, Oxford.
Anonymous , ‘What’s in there?’ in Opie, I. and Opie, P. (Eds) The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book , OUP, Oxford.
Anonymous , ‘There I saw’ in Opie, I. and Opie, P. (Eds) The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book , OUP, Oxford.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘Ed’s Head’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Reeves, J. ‘The Sea’ (1950) in The Wandering Moon , Heinemann, London.
Longfellow, H.W. ‘The tide rises, the tide falls’ in Walters, F. (Ed) (1985) Golden Apples , Macmillan, London.
Curnow, A. ‘Wild Iron’ in Heaney, S. and Hughes, T. (Eds) (1984) The Rattle Bag , Faber, London.
Moore, L. ‘Until I saw the sea’ in Walters, F. (Ed.) (1985) Golden Apples , Macmillan, London.
Clare, J. ‘Little Trotty Wagtail’ in Tibbie, J.W. and Tibbie, A. (Eds) (1976) Selected Poems , Dent, London.
Lear, E. The Pelican Chorus’ in Grigson, G. (Ed.) (1979) The Faber Book of Nonsense Verse , Faber, London.
Tennyson, Lord ‘The Owl’ in (1953) The Faber Book of Children’s Verse , Faber, London.
Grahame, K. ‘Ducks’ Ditty’ in Philip, N. (Ed.) (1996) The New Oxford Book of Children’s Verse , OUP, Oxford.
cummings, e.e. ‘in Just-’ (1953) in Tulips and Chimneys , Liveright, New York.
Keats, J. ‘Meg Merrilies’ (1955) in The Poems of John Keats , Collins, London.
Carter, D. (1998) ‘Old Man’ in Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Jennings, E. (1966) ‘The Ugly Child’, in The Secret Brother , Macmillan, London.
Carter, D. (1994) Imagined Worlds Project Report , CPP, Mold.
Coleridge, S.T. ‘Kubla Khan’, in Beer, J.B. (Ed.) (1963) Selected Poems , Dent, London.
Shakespeare, W. ‘This island’s mine……………’, The Tempest, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare , Collins, London.
Ibid, ‘Be not afeard…………’
Ibid. ‘Full fathom five………..’
Ibid. ‘Where the bee sucks………….’
Garfield, L. (1985) Shakespeare Stories , Gollancz, London.
Carter, D. (Spring 1986) ‘King Lear in the Junior Classroom’, English in Education , Vol. 20, No. 1, NATE, Sheffield.
Carter, D. (Summer 1989) ‘A Country Discovered’, Cambridge Journal of Education , Vol. 19, No. 3, Cambridge Institute of Education, Cambridge.
Carter, D. (1991) The isle is full of noises , Clwyd County Council, Mold.
Ibid.

Dreams and the Imagination

Heard in a poetry reading by Michael Horovitz in Wrexham Library Arts Centre, 1990.
Gaston Bachelard (1969) The Poetics of Reverie , Beacon Press, Boston, USA.
Corbett, P. and Moses, B. (1986), Catapults and Kingfishers , OUP, Oxford.
Bachelard (1969) The Poetics of Reverie , Beacon Press, Boston, USA.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Keats. J. ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ in (1955) The Poems of John Keats , Collins, London.
Mallarme, S. ‘Sonnet (For your dear dead one, her friend)’ (1977) The Poems , Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Blake, W. ‘Tyger’ in (1927) Poems and Prophecies , Dent, London.
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Holub, M. ‘At last’ in (1997), The Rampage , Faber, London.
Hughes, T. ‘Wind’ in (1957) The Hawk in the Rain , Faber, London.
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de la Mare, W. ‘Hide and Seek’ in (1944) Collected Rhymes and Verses , Faber, London.
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Causley, C. ‘Dream Poem’, in Collected Poems , Macmillan, London.
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Unpublished translation by Dennis Carter from Leslie, R. F. (Ed.) (1966) Three Old English Elegies , Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Hopkins, G.M. ‘Inversnaid’ in (1953) Gardner, W.H. (Ed.) Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Selection of his Poems and Prose , Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Interpretations of the Material World

Heaney, S. (1991) Seeing Things , Faber, London.
Wordsworth, W. ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ in (1936) The Poetical works of Wordsworth, Oxford University Press, London.
Theodore Roszak (1972) Where the Wasteland Ends, Faber, London.
Seamus Heaney ‘John Clare’s Prog’ (1995) The Redress of Poetry, Faber, London.
Ekwall, E. (1970) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, OUP, Oxford.
DfEE (1995) English in the National Curriculum, HMSO, London.
Hopkins, G.M. ‘God’s Grandeur’ in (1953) Gardner, W.H. (Ed.) Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Selection of his Poems and Prose, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French Impressionist painter.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian artist and man of science.
Sitwell, E. ‘The trees were hissing like green geese’ in (1957) Collected Poems, Macmillan, London.
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Gross, P. ‘Snails’ in (1984) The Ice Factory, Faber, London.
Johennese, F. ‘the african pot’ in Chapman, M. and Dangor, A. (1982) Voices from Within, A.D. Donker, Cape.
These four haiku appear in (1958) The Four Seasons, Peter Pauper Press, New York.
Carter, D. ‘Beech Tree’ in (1998) Sleeplessness Jungle , CPP, Mold.
Vorobyov, A. ‘Autumn Shone Forth’ in Aygi, G. (1991) An Anthology of Chuvash Poetry, Forest Books, London.