Kate Williams

Hi, here’s my next recommendation for helping your children to get poetry-writing:

Tip 7: Celebrate Sounds

My previous tip focused on the visual – offering picture stimuli in various ways, but many children respond strongly – perhaps more – to sounds. So open the window and listen together, or better still, go outside and stand in the school grounds, silently absorbing the noises around and afar. Discuss what you hear and imitate the sounds.

Make up the sounds yourselves

If your poetry theme is one that has no actual noise to be heard, such as a mythical beast or rainbow colours, make your imagined sounds yourselves and let the children have a go at writing them down, in their own ways. Build a list on the board for potential inclusion in their poems.


Find noises in books

Show or read out some onomatopoeia in books and invite alternatives.

Build a noise-word bank

Take a noisy theme, such as trees in the wind, traffic, or a jungle or farmyard, and build a sound word bank together, including onomatopoeia and describing words.

Whichever you do out of all these, you’ll all have fun and that scary word ‘poetry’ will be scary no more!

Kate

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