When I’m doing poetry with children, I try to encourage them to be open to not making a poem rhyme. Because they don’t, of course, have to. And some of my very favourite poems are non-rhyming which is of course very different from being non-rhythmic. There is also a tendency for children to pluck any old random word out of the air, just to make it rhyme which sometimes works, but other times can sound clunky and contrived once read out loud. However, today we created fun, rhyming, 4-line verses in response to a short, humorous poem called Teacher, Teacher by Roger Stevens. 

I taught the children a little trick that by working backwards and doing the last 2 lines first, the flow of the poem can sound more natural. We also did a lot of reading the poems out loud so that the children could hear if they’d got the rhythm right, or if they needed to cut or change a word here and there. They came up with some great little verses. Here are a couple of them:

Teacher, teacher

If you can’t find Clare

She ate so much

she got stuck in her chair.

By Maia & Shanti

Teacher, teacher

If you can’t find Brian

He’s in the playground

fighting a lion.

By Skye & Seyia