Clerihew Poems

Start by introducing the idea of a clerihew with examples. The one above is by the poet Edward Bentley Clerihew himself, but you can easily find other child-friendly examples on the internet, or knock off a couple yourself. Explain that although the rhymes have to be a,a, b,b, the lines can be any length (they don't have to scan in the traditional sense).

I wrote one on the board about myself:

The trouble with Mrs Long

Is that she's never wrong

She'll put up a fight

To prove she's right.

Then give out one or both the sheets of possible starting lines and write a few together.

You can also issue the children with a sheet of easy rhymes.

The students found it straightforward to write in the clerihew form, but extremely tricky to get the last lines right! The main aspect of Writing Club, though, is to have fun and to experiment, and today's session was all about that. I do think, too, it brought home how clever and skillful good rhyming poetry really is.

Lovely Feedback Again!

Posted with permission.

Till Rolls

I don't know what it is about rolls of paper that make them exciting to write or draw on, but every time I've used them, the children respond enthusiastically. Till rolls are cheap to buy, or you could roll up any paper for the purpose. Often rolls of backing paper get damaged in schools, so you could use them up this way, and I've also used wallpaper borders and the backs of old wallpaper rolls for the same purpose.

Today we each started a story with the same opening line, then, every few minutes, passed the story on to a new writer, asking the recipient to unroll the paper by only a few centimetres to peep at what's gone before. That way you end up with a disjointed but satisfyingly whacky complete story at the end of the session.

But there are lots of ways you could use a long strip of paper: unroll a long strip across the floor, then take a well-known story and have children work on a different sections at once; or see who can write the longest (tallest) tale. Or give two children the 'middle' event of a story and have them write the beginning and the ending simultaneously. There are lots of possibilities.

Creatures of the Night

For this you will need plastic googly eyes, or if you want to push the boat out, glass cabochons in the shape of eyes, which can be bought here. If you're using glass eyes, pre-sort them into pairs. Ideally too provide some black paper and metallic pens for drawing, though the children could work on any dark-coloured paper with light chalks or pastels. Basically you're going for a moonlight effect.

Ask the children to close their eyes and imagine they are outside at night, far away from civilisation and humans. They could imagine being in a jungle, a forest or out on the moors. Ask them to imagine what they can hear - rustling leaves, the wing, the pad of paws, bird calls - and what the air temperature is like on their skin. Ask what the surface under their feet is like, and what scents they can smell, and what the sky above looks like - can they see the moon, lit clouds, constellations? Ask how they are feeling about being out on their own in the dark wilderness. Then tell them they have seen some sort of animal coming towards them.

As the students open their eyes, give out the props. First suggest they draw their animal (it can be real or made-up), and then, when they're ready, they can write about it. I gave mine the choice of writing a description or putting the animal into a story. 

Some animals were friendly but most turned out to be pretty threatening!