It was a Wednesday
morning in Ireland Wood Primary School, and as it turned out, a very special
morning. I was sitting in the school
hall and behind me [in front a display of their fabulous work] sat sixty year 6
pupils. We had an audience of two Year 5
classes and approximately fifty parents and grandparents.
Some of us
were a little nervous.
Class
teachers, Mrs. Amos and Mrs. Stringer introduced the morning, talking about the
learning objectives achieved by and the inclusivity of the project. Mrs. Amos observed how when the project first
started in the school seven years before we had only half a dozen parents in
the audience, and how interest had grown every year.
We were there
to share our writing about the Great War and to explain our writing
journey. Every pupil read some of their
work, some their complete poem. Their
empathetic writings of what it meant to be a soldier at the front, or one of
those left behind waiting for news, provided a moving commentary to World War
One. Poems like ‘Dear Valerie’ and
‘White Feather’ will stay with me for a long time.
I explained
what we did in my first two mornings with Year 6, an ideas session in the first
week, with an editing and redrafting workshop in the second week. I took away my ideas from the first session
and wrote a first draft of a poem which I was then able to share with the
pupils, explaining what I had done, and how they might edit and redraft their own
poems.
In between
my explanations we heard individual recorded clips of children reading
favourite lines from their poems, interspersed with live readings of complete poems. And then all of Year 6 stood and read from
memory the poem. ‘In Flanders Fields’.
We finished
with everyone singing, ‘It’s a long Way To Tipperary’. I looked into the audience and was moved to see
parents and grandparents joining in.
The young
people had a chance to talk about what they had learned from working on the
poetry project and amongst others observed that ‘a poem doesn’t need to rhyme’,
‘how to be more confident about writing a poem’ and ‘how to work on and polish
their work’,
Mr.
Blackburn, the head teacher, spoke a few words of thanks to the audience, and said
how the writing project had become very much part of what the school did.
I continued
to sit in my chair as parents came forward to read from the display of
children’s work. Many of them said how
their children had enjoyed the project and how much they had been inspired and
learned from it.
It was as
ever a brilliantly interactive experience, both working with staff and pupils
at Ireland Wood and then sharing our writing with parents.
James Nash,
18th November 2019
