The National Year of Reading
with Poet and Author John Siddique

With 2008 being the National Year of Reading and the general push now coming into schools that children should be exposed to ‘higher’ culture on a regular basis, acclaimed poet and author John Siddique is offering to come into schools to present his own work, lead creative workshops on the themes of the Year of Reading and/or lead sessions and provide ideas for staff in CPD sessions to stimulate their pupils. All the ideas outlined below are aimed at KS2.

A whole school poetry assembly
A High impact performance of work from John’s CLPE Shortlisted book ‘Don’t wear it on your head.’ John writes real poetry for young people, poetry which is loud, funny, serious and about the real stuff of our lives. Lots of interaction and call and response pieces jostle up against more thoughtful beautiful poems leaving everyone buzzing and wanting to go off and read and write poems of their own.

 

National Year of Reading Workshops – April to July
(August to December workshops coming soon)

April - Read all about it:
A session where we find poetry and stories in newspapers, magazines, junk mail, on billboards. Words are all around us we will capture them to paper and shape them; we will find new idea from the daily language that surrounds us.

May – Mind and Body
Poetry and stories based on our senses, imagination, memories and experiences. We will look at health and being well, keeping our bodies healthy and our minds too, and seeing how they affect each other.

June – Reading Escapes
Explore strange new worlds! See through someone else’s eyes! Try on new ideas! Explore other cultures! We will create poetry and stories from different perspectives of our own, share reading, which takes us out of ourselves and into new lives.

July – Rhythm and Rhyme
the music of words, the joy of repetition, the dance of rhythm as we read and as we write and as we listen to songs, do the pointy dance to Shakespeare, disco to the beat of our wonderful language.

CPD
The National Year of Reading sounds like a great set of ideas, but when will teachers have the time to come up with them on top of their already heavy workload. John is happy to take the strain for you, develop and share ideas and materials that you can use with your own pupils. He will be coming up with materials each month and will lead you through the techniques and ideas that will bring literacy to life around the various subjects to be covered in the coming year, and he’ll make it all fit in neatly with the curriculum too.

John normally will come into your school for a whole day, and run a morning session and an afternoon session, he works with normal class sizes, and in the classroom itself. All he needs is a whiteboard and the children need paper and pens. ‘The Poetry Assembly’ can be bought in as a separate session. For more information, to discuss a visit, your needs, costs please get in touch.