ABSTRACT

Published in 1988, this book is a teacher’s eye view of how children come to write and rewrite poems, and of how they make aesthetic choices in their writing. Drawing on over twenty years’ experience of teaching poetry in primary and secondary schools, Robert Hull presents a detailed account of the process of writing poetry in the classroom. The reader is invited, almost in confidence, to be witness to a skilled teacher’s planning, recognition, and definition of children’s emergent understanding and expertise. The author adopts a non-behaviourist model which stresses difficulty and uncertainty, rejecting a simplistic assumption of linear progression, predictability of outcome, and short-term results. The many examples of poems written by the children demonstrate in a very vivid and impressive way the value of this approach. All teachers, not just of poetry, will find this a fascinating and informed study, and an inspiration for their own work in the classroom.

part 1|85 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|14 pages

How do I get them to write poems?

part 2|71 pages

Process

chapter 2|35 pages

A new class

chapter 3|35 pages

New subjects

part 3|52 pages

Dialogue

chapter 4|27 pages

Children’s ‘autonomy’

chapter 5|24 pages

Intervention

part 4|82 pages

Context

chapter 6|27 pages

Literary models

chapter 7|20 pages

The world out there

chapter 8|34 pages

Other contexts

part 5|43 pages

Relations

chapter 9|21 pages

Products and relations

chapter 10|16 pages

‘But is it poetry?’