When Year 5 finally had the opportunity to share their original poetry about waste and recycling with parents it was to a full classroom. Full of both excited youngsters and enthusiastic parents.
The pupils had been working with local writer and published poet James Nash. This followed a visit to the Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility (known as RERF) at Cross Green. They had explored what happens to the contents of their bins and how it is transformed into electricity for 20,000 homes. The thinking that then went into their creative writing was transformative too.
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The RERF building includes a mix of innovative and sustainable materials and techniques, including a 42m high timber arch forming the main process hall – the largest timber structure of its type in Europe. The facility was awarded the 2015 Project of the Year at the National Structural Timber Awards. |
James led them through some of the processes he uses to write a poem: from first ideas (where they had been challenged to imagine they were a piece of rubbish in a bin); describing their journey to the recycling centre; thinking about what their senses would tell them about the experience; how they might feel at different stages on the way. These are pretty sophisticated concepts when you're only nine or ten years old! They handled it brilliantly and no-one produced any throwaway lines.
In the next session with James, Year 5 worked hard on how to edit and redraft those first ideas into a poem. They thought about what they really wanted to say and how to express it most effectively. They were looking for powerful vocabulary, great metaphors and expressive writing while considering how to organise their thinking into lines and verses, using what they had learnt about the form and structure of a poem.
While they worked on polishing and improving their poems there was lots of opportunity for them to practise reading their drafts aloud in preparation for the classroom finale sharing their work with parents, other school staff and visitors.
The journey, a furious mix of jerking and jostling,
The wall of glass intimidating
wrote one gifted poet. While another, conscious of the sound of their words and managing rhyme beautifully, said
Jumbled and tumbled,
Crumpled and rumpled
Locked in a lair
Filled with despair
Another young writer wrote,
The last journey is a sonic fast from waste to aggregate
The colossal claw is grabbing
Year 5 really enjoyed the experience of working with a ‘real, live’ poet. ‘He was really friendly,’ said one pupil, 'and he knew how to help us’.
The parents in the audience were very appreciative of the work of the class. One youngster had a sibling who had take part in a previous year’s workshop with James, and whose mum was moved to say, ’The kids’ creativity was off the scale! It’s such a great event’.
‘They had such self-confidence in reading out their poems,’ an enthusiastic audience member said, while another valued the cross-curriculum impact of the poetry writing, ‘It was so good that it was a part of another project - a big one that they are doing - and the idea of writing from point of view of a piece of rubbish was brilliant!’
Mrs Joanne Parker, class teacher, concurred, ‘Every year we say how fantastic this poetry unit is . This felt like the best ever’.
Perhaps it’s appropriate to give a Year 5 pupil the last words,
I cannot go home now
I’ll be burnt in a furnace
Used to tarmac roads
Hurled onto a fiery rock
Gone and never coming back
Maybe the rubbish is gone and never coming back but the school staff were as one in hoping that James could indeed come back to work his transformation on the next year group.
Headingley LitFest is very grateful once again for support for this project from the Area Management Committee of Leeds City Council and the local councillors who allocate the grant.
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