Today Class 4 welcomed Otley Town Poet Matthew Hedley Stoppard for a poetry masterclass. He began by talking about his process of writing - starting from a tiny notebook, to a larger exercise book to a typewriter and finally to the publishers.
After performing one of his brilliant poems for us we started some warm-up games to familiarise ourselves with syllables and think about the beats of words with the 'breakfast beats' activity!
Mr Stoppard explained that we would be using this knowledge to write a Haiku poem inspired by a World War 2 evacuation scenario. Pupils were each given a small envolope with a scenario to get those creative juices flowing!
After looking at some examples of Haikus we started to develop some of our own ideas.
With our expert on hand to offer advice, we started honing our ideas and shaping them into the strict format of a Haiku (5, 7 then 5 syllables).
After a little break it was time for some more warm-up activities which made for some amusing photos!
It was time to finalise our poems, which were written on small evacuee tags which the children wore around their necks. We were really starting to get into character now.....
Next up was a quick activity in which we tried to assemble a poem from tiny sections ('This is just to say' by William Carlos Williams) to reinforce the idea that there are multiple options when deciding how to order ideas in a poem and often words and phrases can be rearranged to achieve pleasing or interesting effects.
Our next writing prompts were hidden inside ballons - pop! This idea was brilliant as it was really fun but also made some of the feeling feel slight tension in anticipation of the bang - ideal for thinking about the frontline or bombing raids back in Britain. It also made for a hilarious set of pictures:
For our final task we were to write a collaborative poem (or 'poetry jam') with one line from each poet in the class. To add a little authenticity, the final piece was to be typed on an old typewriter by the pupils one line at a time - the added advantage (depending how you look at it!) of this is that, unlike a computer, there was no room for errors so each child had to be so careful to get their line right! No pressure!
Further props were introduced at this stage to give pupils inspiration for their one brilliant line...
Overall, we had a fantastic day and it served for a brilliant springboard for the remainder of our poetry topic in English. Mr Stoppard kindly told us we could borrow his typewriter next week so work more on our collaborative piece - we can't wait!
Kind thanks to Mr Stoppard for a brilliantly resourced, engaging day of poetry fun!
