Tuesday 22 October 2013

Teachers: Autumn recipe ideas!



Are you a teacher? Is poetry-writing, or creative writing generally, on your 'to-do' list? Or do you have a bunch of hesitant or reluctant writers who need an extra spark of fun to fire them up? Here are some ideas and tips for an exciting autumn poem that children of all writing abilities will love, especially with a bit of prompting. The ideas below are all tried and tested, and I'll be following them up with more soon. As for Bonfire Night - I have plenty up my sleeve for firework poetry too, so keep checking back here.

With Hallowe'en looming, and Bonfire Night flashing and sparking up ahead, I've been working with children to create autumn recipe poems. It's great fun for teachers as well as pupils, and can take off in any direction!

While awaiting more detailed ideas and tips (coming later in the week), you could get started with some quantities: a teaspoonful or a treeful? - and some ingredients - flour? What, for autumn? Leaves, more like, or one of their colours, or how about the shadows produced by their wind-swept branches or, for a bit of alliteration, a teaspoon of tricks, toadstools, toad-brown or twinkling twilight? Encourage your class to be bold, to venture out, to stretch their minds up to the amethyst sky above the brassy, coppery treetops, and down to the pungent mud oozing into their sodden shoes.

But you'll need more than a teaspoon of something for a bubbling autumn potion! How about some handfuls and packetfuls now, and some pinches and sprinkles and ladles and dishes and the odd toasting forkful too, of...? Well, that's for your class to decide. Again, you might go for crazy, outlandish measurements rather than familiar, kitchen-focused ones that fit the alliteration game: a whirling mist of purple would be more intriguing than a packet of the stuff. Then there's the cooking of it all, and the question of where to leave your concoction to set. Half-term homework?

More on the topic soon. Meanwhile, check out the autumn poems on my Nature and For kids pages here, and the ones on my other website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com (October Poems and More October Poems).

Happy potion-mixing!

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