Jumpstart! Poetry: Games and Activities for Ages 7-12 (ISSN)

I found many of the activities in this book really useful - my Year 6 class produced some great poetry. However, my 4 star review is because I don't find the layout of the book user friendly at all. I am always pushed for time and found I had to wade through a lot of text to find what I needed. I would find it easier to have the sections more clearly set out and signposted. For instance, I wanted to find an exercise on personification and virtually had to read the whole book to find one - it was worth it though. For ideas and creativity, I would recommend any of Pie Corbett's books, but would ideally like this Jumpstart series to be redesigned with busy teachers in mind!

Used on my teaching placements - lots of wonderful ideas that really grabbed my class and enthused them. Really worked well with the English programme Power Of Reading which my last school used. I took lots of the games (i.e. the Tyger Tyger ones) and applied them to a couple of the poems from the POR set texts and supplemented some other poems with other ideas from this book - my class loved it. We had a poet of the day, poetry tree, class poetry book, poems of the day - when given the choice of a chapter of book or a poem it was a closed vote, they all wanted a poem!

Poetry is a tough thing for many teachers to approach, especially with less and less children growing up with a rich oral/musical home life. This book is a rare tool to help primary practicioners get to grips with teaching this neglected area of Literacy.

A lovely book with LOTS of practical examples and ideas for poetry games to play. Varied and imaginative games too. Lovely for any junior class.

A great support for a newly qualified teacher