Thirteen Amazing Things To Do With A Poem

Have you ever sat down and made a list of different, whacky things you could do with a poem?

That is what we are going to encourage you to do with your children. Here’s how.

Let’s Start With A Poem

David begins this workshop by looking at this wonderful poem by Rita Ray:

Thirteen Things You Could Do With Thirteen Things To Do With A Poem

Here are David’s 13 suggestions:

1. Put up the poem’s title minus the last word. Write or reveal the poem line by line and invite the class to guess that missing word. Once the whole poem is shown discuss the chief clue – both real and misleading!

2. Children, maybe in pairs, prepare readings of the poem in a particular styles, say Blue Peter or a cookery programme.

3. As the class to write onto their copies of the poem a sequel to each line suggesting what happens next, eg:

Read it to the cat – until she purrs
Kep it inside your sock for a day – then tell everyone it’s the first poem to
appear on smellyvision

4. From the words of the poem what image do we get of the poet, Rita Ray?

5. Make found poems by cutting Thirteen Things into individual words and using any or all to create fresh lines.

6. Children make a version of the poem as a cartoon or small book in the manner of an instruction manual, complete with explanatory diagrams.

7. Invite ideas for more things to do with a poeand turn the whole into a classroom display.

8. ‘Thirteeen Things To Do With A Poem’ is a list poem. Make a collection of list poems. Here are just two websites containing list poems – Poetry Line and Poetry Box.

9. Have another look at Rita Ray’s poem. Ask the children to rewrite it in the same style but this time each line must have exactly 13 words.

10. Ask the children to write their own ‘Thirteen Things To Do With… poem. Use everyday subjects to begin with: a pencil, a jamjar, a friend. This works well done in writing pairs.

11. More ambitiously ask them to write poems listing things to do with an imaginatively challenging subject: a rainbow, Saturn, a dream…

12. A final variation is to invite poems titled Thirteen (or six or twenty) Ways of Looking at/Sitting/Making etc. So children can write ways at looking at a pebble, getting to sleep, making a mess and so on.

13. In Rita Ray’s poem her fourth thing is ‘Tie it to a balloon and launch it’. A cylinder of helium gas, balloons, thread and poems written on lightweight paper make this a real possibility – and a marvellous spectacle. Don’t forget to tell any airports nearby what you are up to!

David and Mike from Goodeyedeers.

Check out our TpT Store below for more great teaching resources.

How To Have Fun With Alliteration and Tongue Twisters

Alliteration is simply the repetition of words beginning with the same letter/sound.

Its hold on our senses begins as soon as we are made aware of language in childhood, with rhymes such as ‘Sing a Song of Sixpences’ and ‘A ring, a ring o’ roses’. Plus a host of alliterating characters from ‘Little Boy Blue’ to ‘Wee Willie Winkle’.

How can you use the power of alliteration in your clasroom?

Having Fun With Poetry

Here are a number of suggestions as to how you might get your children writing poetry about their hands – and maybe their feet as well!

We are going to look at a poem by Michael Rosen called, ‘This Is The Hand’ and use it as a stimulus to getting your children writing their own poems.

Writing Poetry By Counting Syllables

Counting syllables to write poetry is an ancient art and one that can be fun to emulate.

The tight format is something that many writers, young and old, find helpful.