At London Fields Primary
During National Poetry Day, the children at London Fields read a range of poems linked to this year s theme, Freedom. Children across the school enjoyed listening to a range of poetry, performing poems and writing their own. Enjoy having a look at what we got up to..
Year 1 In Year One we celebrated National Poetry Day by learning the poem Now We Are Six by A.A Milne. A particularly apt poem for Year One children who soon all will be free to experience the joys of being 6! We learned to recite it by heart and decorated a copy of the poem with numbers practising both the reading and writing of numbers as always!
In year 5 we learnt the art of Oulipo. We wrote down our names, favourite animals and favourite film /song / sports team. We used all of the letters from these words and we were free to jumble them up. Using these letters, we had to make as many words as possible. This proved to be quite challenging! Year 5 Our last step was to put those words into lines we could use for our poems. Some of them sounded a little like nonsense but they were very entertaining all the same!
PERFORMANCES Watch us performing our poems, as well as Ethan & Joy explaining what they did!
In Miss Thackeray s Literacy Group we first listened to and read When I Swing by Matt Goodfellow and discussed all of the poetic techniques that we could spot... we found: Rhymes Alliteration Similes and metaphors Repetition. Year 4 We also talked about the interesting way that the poem was presented on the page.
Next, we thought of an activity that makes us feel free and happy and we created mind- maps of how we feel whilst doing that activity.
After we had collected lots of ideas, we wrote our first draft of a poem inspired by When I Swing. We aimed to have three stanzas and we tried to include similes. Then last of all, after we had proof-read our poems, we wrote out our final copy and decorated the page. In small groups, we also practised reciting When I Swing and performed for Mr Lawrence, (who filmed us).
Year 3
We worked hard to learn the poem offby-heart! We rehearsed reading the poem with expression!
I Found A Dinosaur In The Shed By Kate Wakeling Year 4
In Miss Gallagher s Group we were introduced to a poem called, I found a dinosaur under the shed. After discussing our feelings towards it and the idea of freedom within the poem, we performed it in small groups. First, we practised and decided whether we wanted to add actions and how it would be read. Then we performed it to the class.
We thought about the dinosaurs perspective in the poem and decided to write a poem all about what the dinosaur could see, feel, or what it might have been thinking at different points.
In Y6 we too read the poem I Found a Dinosaur Under the Shed by Kate Wakeling. Year 6 In pairs we created freeze-frames representing lines in the poem. I asked him not to leave. The next day I found his footprints in the mud: a mark, a mark, then nothing. At night I heard him stride around the garden, Beating his wings and trying to fly. We looked for clues in the poem that the dinosaur wanted to leave? We also thought about: What might hold the dinosaur back, What clues lurked in the poem about what would happen if the dinosaur didn t leave, How the narrator felt about the dinosaur, How the poem made us feel. We then took two colouring pencils- one for PET dinosaur and one for WILD dinosaur. We circled words and phrases linked to these different ideas and discussed which force seemed the stronger by the end of the poem!
We imagined we were the dinosaur and wrote a poem responding to the line in the original poem: She asked me not to leave First we thought about possible reasons why, as the dinosaur, we needed our Freedom Then we started to flesh these ideas out. Playing around with breaks in the poetry s lines, exploring the power of repetition, evolving a simple structure and expressing our heart felt feelings from the dinosaur s point of view, we wrote possible lines for our poem. She asked me not to leave She asked me not to leave, But I dreamt of soaring through the sky, Spreading my wings, exploring the unknown. She asked me not to leave, But I longed to hunt in the wildness, Answering the angry growls of my stomach. She asked me not to leave, But I needed to find others like me, Belonging to a family of like-minded souls. She asked me not to leave But I yearned to build a home to rest, Growing freely in an ever-expanding space. She asked me not to leave But I wanted to roar with all my might, Releasing my voice for all to hear. She asked me not to leave But I had to protect her tiny being, Saving her from my burning instinct. Working together, we shared our ideas and formed a class poem. We hope you enjoy reading it. She asked me not to leave, But I had to follow my heart..
BREAKING FREE FROM GRAVITY Year 6 We discussed the sounds of freedom in the poem. We spotted all the words with long vowel sounds, giving space and freedom within the poem. Next we went on a zero gravity journey and wrote our gravity journey down. free feline
Our zero gravity journeys became inspirations for our poems.