Poems to Perform: A Classic Collection chosen by the Children's Laureate

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Secondly, it boosts confidence and self-belief. Our Inspirational Poems for Children provide words of wisdom to help children remember that they can achieve anything. Their dreams can become reality, all you need is a little bit of hope and inspiration to get there. Sometimes children need reminding to celebrate that they're unique, so you might also like this lovely poem poster. Or this worksheet teaching children to celebrate themselves. Or how about this factastic Sports poems acrostic template? Your poems of choice should be vivid and allow your child to create a clear mental picture of what’s going on.

One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. The poems you choose can encourage wordplay. That stimulates your child to see words and the way they are used in a different fashion. Encouraging children to act out stories, plays – and poems – has been a key element in Julia Donaldson’s work as Children’s Laureate. In this new anthology, published in her final few weeks in the role, she has collected poems which are ideal for performing. Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta.Allow children to work in groups to decide how to perform a poem of their choice, which they liked when read aloud. When they heard the poem, how did it make them feel? How could they explore this in their performance? How will they use the volume, tone and pace of their voices to convey the emotions? If they work in a group will they all perform at once? Take turns to do different parts? A mixture of both? Some of the actions you can use in your performances are also covered, and there are a few example videos at the end by Benjamin Zephaniahand Joseph Coelho. What is Performance Poetry? From What Are We Fighting For? by Brian Moses and Roger Stevens . ‘Let No One Steal Your Dreams’ by Paul Cookson I am a big fan of poetry so am very excited to see children's poetry taking a larger role in my second year of studies. Use different volumes - for example, lowering our voice can create an atmosphere of suspense, whereas raising our voice can add emphasis

The ones that I did annotate however, I adored! There is so much possible to do with them, from tongue twisters, to chants, to full blown acting opportunities. I found poems that would work for small groups (3/4), that they could stage themselves very easily from the imagery provided. And others that could use the whole class (around 32 lines to give out in the poems) that can either be handed over completely, or controlled by the teacher in the position of a narrator/conductor. I particularly like this book as it provides suggestions on how to perform the written pieces. An idea from this book could be used as a way of encouraging children to think of their own ways to perform a piece. This type of text really helps to build confidence in children and bring poetry to life. I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). What can allusion tell us? Like many of the poems on the list, this piece would be great for a group performance. The mounting frustration of the speaker, who awaits the coming of a peaceful and just world and “a rebirth of wonder,” is captured, often humorously, in twisted snippets of popular rhetoric. Ferlinghetti weaves biblical, mythological, literary, and historical allusions into a litany against tyranny and cultural hegemony. How might these allusions be brought to bear on the text? How would the strategic line breaks, particularly those between well-known sound bites of American speech and the speaker’s ironic response to them, sound with multiple voices, as in the lines “and I am waiting for the war to be fought / which will make the world safe / for anarchy”? The growing anxiety of this speaker cries out for a human voice as much as the text cries out for hyperlinks.The Highwayman could also be the inspiration for children producing different types of writing e.g. Bess’s diary entries, a love letter from The Highwayman to Bess, a play depicting the meeting between Tim the ostler and the soldiers prior to the final shooting. A switch in perspective would also be intriguing, perhaps the poem could be re written as a story through the eyes of The Highwayman himself. Ask a group of children to work on an ensemble performance – sometimes known as ‘choral speaking’. As well as assigning lines (all, solos, subgroups) they’ll need to consider dynamics and agree an appropriate delivery for each line. This works well with poems that have repetition or refrain, different voices, narrative. There is such a range of poems in this book that there is something for everyone - even someone who usually doesn’t care much for poetry like myself! I’m sure other children would feel the same, and the possibilities with this book are endless.