Attention UK teachers! Poetry frames to buy!
I have 70 attractive, effective poetry-writing frames available to buy!
Click Poetry Frames for list, topics and details.
Price (UK) 30p each; minimum charge: 60p. With accompanying notes: 40p each.
Each sheet has been tried out in classrooms with rewarding results, as confirmed time after time by both pupils and teachers. In fact, teachers invariably ask permission to make copies for future lessons, and that's what spurred me to put them up for sale to all.
The frames cover a wide range of popular topics - list on enquiry - and coming soon to this site. Examples are: Planets, Aliens, Seaside, Pirate Treasure, Castles, Giants, Jungle and Dragons.
Most of the sheets come in a choice of 2 or 3 grades of difficulty. The majority are for younger children, in the 4-8 age range, with some for older children too.
I have designed, produced and hand-illustrated each sheet, tailoring and adjusting them over the years for maximum success.
To buy: please place your orders directly with me, via email @ katewilliams.poetry@gmail.com . If you are a PayPal account-holder, you can pay through PayPal. Otherwise, please send cheque when I have confirmed receipt of your order.
Here is a picture of children using one of my seaside sheets.
Any questions? Do get in touch!
Email: katewilliams.poetry@gmail.com
Twitter @Katypoet
Website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com
Kate
Well, who ever said February was a dull month? Perhaps no one where you are, but here in the UK, every type of weather except sunshine has been the order of the day this side of Christmas. But inside the classroom, it's been a different story.
With dragons, space and wild woods as my topic choices this term, children have been conjuring up all sorts for me in schools across the country. We've had dragons charging into staff rooms, planets cartwheeling through black holes, and slimy slugs sliding through swamps - in poetic form, you understand! And acted out too, in some cases.
My old, battered guitar - and old, rusty strumming skills - have come in handy too for word-building songs along the way, including one where we watch out for the [something, something] dragon. You'd be amazed at the weird and wonderful assortment of dragons around: from spotty to invisible; from vicious to protective; from creepy to crazy to downright lazy to skiing to sky-diving to sports car-driving! You name it, a dragon can do it, according to the children in my classes. And as for the children, they can do poetry: they find it in themselves, lurking in odd corners of their souls, as the session rolls out.
In March I shall be including an extra topic - an ambitious one in this new climate of ours, perhaps: spring. If no spring comes, I shall be in for an uphill push to get youngsters enthused in memories of last year's... if we had one then. But children's imagination is a great asset in these situations: they'll create a spring scene as fresh as a March breeze with half a nudge.
It's always the right time for creativity!
Kate
Children are proving as imaginative and creative as ever in my workshops this term.
Dragons, Wild Woods and Space have been my themes so far, with Spring to join in later (in the classroom even if not beyond!), and our discussions have opened a myriad doors!
Every group adopts a slightly different focus from the last, however similar my input and directing each time. One child's idea will influence the next which will knock on to the next which will colour the next..., resulting in delicious assortments! The fiery, smouldering dragons in one room will be a world away from the lazy, time-wasting beasts in the next; floral forests down the corridor will flourish in blissful ignorance of the eerie, forbidden ones across the hall.
Today, at Creigiau Primary School near Cardiff, where Space was our theme, delights included monkey-cheeky aliens, diamond-studded planets, crackling comets, hurtling rockets, and shooting stars walzing elegantly through black holes. Yesterday's space poems, at Coychurch Primary, produced a different, yet no less thrilling, array of space life.
Next term - the so-called 'Summer Term' (funny joke for us in flood-hit UK) - my topics will be Jungle, Sea and Mini-Beasts (or creepy-crawlies, including the winged variety), so who knows what's in store come the end of April? In our sea sessions I shall hope to find ancient, long-ago abandoned treasure, rusting away on the murky ocean floor, or at least at the bottom of a poem, and will brace myself to the possibility of sea monsters, in whatever shape and mood my young writers may devise. But in between, I'll do my best to squeeze in a snatch of sunbathing and splashing about in the lacy, sky-blue waves - well, in my head anyway, and I can be sure, before I even know which schools I shall be working with, that other poetic treats will be coming my way, once again. As for my Jungle workshops, there's no guessing what thrills we shall encounter together as we beat a path through the poisonous, humming, sizzling tangles of... the classroom!
Meanwhile, my Spring theme awaits the busiest month of the year for a workshopper like me - March. March is the month of World Book Day, when just about every school sees fit to have a writer in to stir up that extraordinary, if sometimes bashful, young creative potential that is forever buzzing and humming away in the minds of our next generation, from one school to the next, and one country to the next, round the world.
Today I caught sight of some tightly curled, safely weatherproofed leaf buds, swinging about on a storm-swept branch. Hope, they seemed to sing!
Kate
Kate Williams
Website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com
Twitter: @Katypoet
