CHILDREN’S  POETRY

BRING IT TO LIFE ESPECIALLY ON NATIONAL POETRY DAY 

Says children’s poet Josie Whitehead from Ilkley, West Yorkshire

POEMS FOR EVERYONE BUT ESPECIALLY CHILDREN

www.whiteheadm.co.uk/html/josies_poetry.htm

CHILDREN’S POET, JOSIE WHITEHEAD

Yorkshire writer, Josie Whitehead loves writing poetry, especially for children, and they love reading her poetry.  At the request of local children 50 poems were put onto her own website last year.  Now there are about 265 poems, and more each week and over  21000 visitors have been to this website since then.

VOICE RECORDINGS

What has made these poems especially useful to children and also to ESL students, is the fact that Josie has added her own clear English voice recording to each of the poems, as children pointed out how useful this was as a tool to help them with reading.

LESSON PLANS, ARTICLES, GAMES AND CRAFT PROJECTS

Josie has been a teacher all her working life, and realizes how useful it would be to add lesson plans for teachers, ideas for bringing poetry to life in the classrooms, games and art and craft projects for the children, as well as the excellent poems.

STORY POEMS, RHYMING POEMS AND OTHER FORMS OF POETRY

The poems range from simple fun story poems on every subject under and including the sun but advancing to include teaching children how effective other forms of poetry such as sonnets, Victorian ballads, haiku, blank verse can be.  It teaches children that some of these poems are written with a strict discipline which can be very challenging to a poet.

NATIONAL POETRY DAY – 4 October 2007

National Poetry Day is 4 October 2007.  Josie has been invited into classrooms near to her home.  She says “National Poetry Day may be 4 October 2007, but why stop at one day?  Children need poetry every day.  They need to be encouraged by teachers and children’s poets to bring it to life in lots of fun ways.  So, why not invite a children’s poet into your classrooms on other days too, even via Skype?”

Dreams are the subject for National Poetry Day.  Here are two poems that you might like to try with your classes:

Dreamland:  www.whiteheadm.co.uk/html/dreamland1.html#dreamland

Send Me a Dream: www.whiteheadm.co.uk/html/send_me.html#adream

SKYPE JOSIE INTO YOUR POETRY CLASSES

As from September, it will be possible to invite Josie into your classrooms via Skype, and children will love to meet the poet whose poems they have been reading, to hear her read a poem, talk about writing her poems and also show her what they have been doing.