Earlham Primary School

Former children’s laureate Michael Rosen has been working with teaching staff across the Eko Trust to help them to support children to improve their reading and writing of both poetry and prose.

Michael who is famous for creating stories such as ‘No Breathing in Class’, ‘Bananas In My Ears’ and ‘Fluff the Farting Fish’ delivered a workshop at Earlham Primary, which is one of the four primary schools that make up the Eko Trust Academy of good and outstanding schools.

Michael had previously met two of Earlham Primary’s leaders of learning at his teaching poetry workshop at Keats House and was delighted to take up the offer to visit their school.

More than 50 teaching staff from the four primaries attended his workshop, which looked at new ways to share poems,  developed ideas for creating 'poetry-friendly classrooms' and explored new ideas for writing poems.

A key theme of Michael's session was the importance of supporting children to read, enjoy and play with poetry and relate it to their own experiences and lives.

He also used some of his own experiences to demonstrate the importance of 'having a go' or, as he described it, "trial and error without fear of failure", the importance of children being able to experiment with language and try new things. Teaching staff also shared the poems they had created in the session.

Building on the learning

Staff have been keen to take on the learnings from the  workshop and Earlham Primary have run a whole school poetry week using Michael's pedagogy.

 Children started the week exploring different poems and choosing a poem to analyse. They talked about what the poem made them think of, what it reminded them of, and what language they liked in the poem. They also deconstructed how the poet had 'built' the poem, and identified the 'secret strings' that had been used. Pupils also drafted and edited their own poems using some of the same techniques.

Pupils have also performed their poetry to parents in school assemblies and individual class poetry books are now part of the school’s reading corners ensuring more children have access to the poetry.

Laura Hewer, Headteacher of Earlham Primary, said: “Michael Rosen has really helped our teachers to love teaching poetry - it is no longer a separate 'unit' in our English curriculum but forms part of our learning throughout the year, and not just in English. Next month, for example, we will be celebrating poems about science as part of Science Week.”

“Michael has inspired us to do more creative whole school projects. We will be exploring war poems across the school and writing our own to perform to mark the centenary of WW1, and we are having our very first whole school Shakespeare Week in the Spring Term.”