I think I might just be Pie Corbett’s latest, greatest fan. And not just his name. Until recently, I hadn’t even heard of him, but now I can’t get enough of him and am confident that he is going to help me a great deal in the coming months to become a better teacher of […]
Of course there will be examples to counter this but the Kenyan education system, on the whole, is not known for getting children to think for themselves, ask questions or be creative. So it’s a challenge to take creative writing and poetry into this system and get the kids to open up and take risks […]
Perfect three lined poems/ Encapsulating the pulse/ And breath of life. Now. What more wonderful way to introduce children who are wary of poetry than to share Haiku with them. Deliciously short and sweet, even young children grasp the concept of syllables very quickly (1st line 5 syllables / 2nd line 7 / 3rd line […]
I do so love these Story Cubes. They are perfect to get little imaginations fired up, even from as young as two or three. (My 3 year old always enjoys creating a story after rolling the dice.) A child can tell their own story from start to end, or more than one child can create […]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, […]
The prolific children’s writer Allan Ahlberg grew up, by his own admission, with “a fair few clips round the ear, no books and not much conversation.” But that hasn’t stopped him from writing over 140 books for children, many of which his wife illustrated. With his benchmark sense of humour and warmth, one of his […]
The Thin Prison was written by Welsh poet Leslie Norris and perfectly encapsulates the excitement and magic of unleashing words from a pen. I looked at this today with a large group of Year 4’s (in a school that borders Nairobi National Park and apparently they often have warthogs wandering through the playground – how […]
This week I worked with a group of Year Three’s at Hillcrest School. We had lots of fun playing monster-themed games to get the children thinking about new and interesting ways to describe monsters. Using Ogden Nash’s poem The Wendigo as inspiration, the children then created their own monsters and wrote poems about them. The destroyer, the […]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, […]
Story Jars A fun, simple idea to try at home. Children can come up with different people, situations and places and write them on slips of paper. Each child will then pick one paper from each jar and – hey presto – they have the beginning of a story.