A Year with Poetry

A text on poetry by Rosen and Barrs suggests a treat in store. Readers will not be disappointed. A group of London teachers have met regularly over the course of a year to work with Rosen on poetry. In the opening chapter Rosen tells the story of the group, pointing up some of his beliefs about children and poetry along the way - the centrality of playfulness in dealings with poetry; the links between reading, writing and oracy; the need for the widest possible definition of poetry. Barrs' concluding chapter is a fascinating reflection on what the process meant for the teachers in terms of their classrooms, their confidence in tackling poetry and, perhaps most importantly, their personal development. The rest of the book is devoted to teachers' snapshots of some of their key experiences with poetry. The range was wide: one person focused on performance, another on organising a Poetry Week; some chose fine-grained research, such as a study of two six-year-olds, while others went for the bigger picture, e.g. 'a year with year 6'; and we encounter everything from 'Proustian Smarties' to shopping raps, poems that are 'not quite Tennyson' to those that are 'not yet on the Underground'. The individual voices of the teachers and their enthusiasm for tackling poetry with their pupils are a tonic for anyone feeling jaded by the text, sentence and word level straight-jacket of the National Literacy Strategy. Ideas are brought to life by attractive photographs of kids in classrooms and, of course, poetry by young writers. A feast of ideas for those new to poetry and fresh challenges for old hands. Another very good book from the CLPE stable.