I’m a huge admirer of Frances Asti, the international new arrivals teacher at Stanley Grove Primary in Longsight. A fervent advocate of poetry, Frances has taught me much about my own use of language and so I was delighted when she asked for a poem she might use in her lessons.

The poem I chose was ‘New Gold’. I wanted something which could be modelled by children in a way which would help reveal the things important to them. In return, Frances was kind enough to write the following report on her work.

As a child my earliest memories of poetry – apart from nursery rhymes – are linked to pictures and paintings. One poetry book I received from my parents when I was 6 was full of colourful pictures of tigers, wizards and the Jellicle cats. It is because pictures bring words to life for me and because words inspire pictures that I knew how to teach Dom Conlon’s poem, ‘New Gold’ with a group of year 5 and 6 “International New Arrivals” The fact that Dom had sent the poem to us specially was inspiration enough for the children.

Two of the children in the group were very recently arrived – speaking Urdu, Spanish and a little English. Another boy spoke and understood more but still had confusions over phrases in English. There was also an Urdu and Spanish speaker. Two more spoke Urdu (one Spanish too) and are much more confident in their understanding and speaking of English.

I used English and Spanish to teach the sessions and the children used these languages and Urdu.

I briefly said there was a message in the poem but we never really referred back to this directly as so many messages emerged from it. There are so many English words in the poem I knew the children wouldn’t be able to access them all, so I produced a set of clip art images for each part of the poem – children throwing leaves in the air to help me to explain ‘scatter’, two people arguing for ‘fought’ (which is tricky in tense and meaning), people singing for ‘vocal chords’, and so on. We played it first as a game – matching lines of the poem to pictures because I knew I would need to use modelling and repetition a lot.  There was a sense of enjoyment and a challenge and it was a focus for developing talk. I love languages but would I have matched pictures so readily to Urdu words on first hearing them? I don’t think so. The children were amazing and really fired up by the poem as well as liberated by their understanding of the higher order language. Some words clearly resembled Spanish words, and we used three different languages in the sessions. It seemed that some Urdu words were similar in sound but I will need to ask the children again.

After playing with words and pictures from the poem we performed it. I read through and the children held up the images as I read. There was a drum on the table and spontaneously a child started to play some beats at intervals in the poem and it turned into a kind of song. I had provided a picture for sunrise for life to carry on and we had rehearsed all standing up at the end holding this picture – which was quite literally a bigger picture. The effect was dramatic.

A week later we returned to the poem and the children had remembered most of the words and images, performing in front of a member of staff. He loved the session and had noticed things I had missed. I teach poetry in different ways but I scaffold the learning to help. So for their own poem the children had a grid with columns and words to choose from – which were interchangeable and linked to the pictures and words from the poem we had played with. They included a ‘where’ column, a ‘who for’ column, and a ‘to do what’ column.

The children composed 6 lines in all with a top and bottom line I provided. I said to them that anything goes if they wanted it in their poem and that poetry breaks the “rules” so that’s fine! I can honestly say that even with a visitor in our small room the children were fully engaged in writing their poems, although the fact the grown-up was so positive with them and joined in really helped. Each child approached the poetry writing in quite an individual way – one child used the grid quite methodically, two boys worked together and really wanted to make more “sense” of the words. 

There was talk and there was silence. But there wasn’t any stress. That’s what a good bit of poetry does for you!

WOW! This inspires me to work harder when I’m in schools, to realise that my poetry is only the starting point for children. My motto is ‘Be More Frances!’

Here’s the poem:

Our message is not written
in gold to be collected by aliens

It is written
in autumn leaves for children to scatter

Our message is not written
in gold to die in the cosmos

It is written
in honey for bees to be born

Our message is not written
in gold to be fought over by men

It is written
in daffodils for friends to make peace

Our message is not written
in gold to be seen by nobody

It is written
in the vocal chords for everyone to hear

Our message is not written
in gold to be aimed at by asteroids

It is written
in sand for the oceans to reach

Our message is not written
in gold to be lost in space

It is written
in candlelight for the lost to be found

Our message is not written
in gold to be forgotten by history

It is written
in rings to be remembered

Our message is not written
in gold to be swallowed by infinity

It is written
in summer rain for the thirsty to drink

Our message is not written
in gold for spaceships to carry

It is written
in the sunrise for life

for life

for life

for life
to carry on

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