an article by Frances Asti, International New Arrivals Teacher. Stanley Grove Primary Academy. Longsight.

There’s a Starman waiting in the sky

He’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds…

He told me

Let the children use it

Let the children lose it

Let all the children boogie.

David Bowie

The Starman for me is the poet, and the children dancing is the freedom that poetry gives them. That’s my story and I am sticking to it . Words mean different things to different people. The children I work with range from those who speak a few words of English, some who are in a ‘silent period’ and others who are developing their English at different levels, with increasing confidence. They all speak other languages. Using poetry in our lessons has helped their confidence so much.

The  lessons I referred to were with an amazing Year 6 boy who came to England in March from Italy, speaking Italian, Urdu and a little English. These lessons have been revealing to me as a teacher of International New Arrivals in terms of showing me even more how bilingual and multi-lingual children are so skilled in developing a second, third and even fourth language and how much this can be done through the right choice of poetry.

For myself and for the children, poetry helps us to breathe as we can use however many or few words we want, in whichever language we choose. We can use gestures, expressions and pictures as well as the spoken and written word. It is rooted in sound Early Years practice which embraces the foundations of language development. There is so much talk but the silences – whether they are time to think and understand – or part of a silent period are as important as the words.

It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music….

Zen saying

I have a beautiful video of a Year 1 child whose first language is Pashto. It is from the early days when she first came, performing the Incey Wincey spider nursery rhyme with a few words of English and a language she has made up just for the joy of saying the rhyme and holding the puppet. Later she sent a lovely video of a poem which she made up in Pashto, along with other children for International Mother Languages  day and although her parents sent me a translation I loved just listening to the original words. It was about her friend and at one point she pointed to her eyes to show she was talking about her friend’s green eyes and how she missed her friend. It was a very powerful piece of poetry because she delivered it with the same passion as Incey Wincey spider, just with a different poet’s voice .

Poetry is such a brilliant medium for this confident exploration of a new language and I love Dom’s poems for the same reasons that the Year 6 child above gave me when I asked why he had chosen New Gold as his favourite poem overall. New Gold is not in this collection but it has been repeatedly loved by different groups of children who are developing their English. The child indicated he loved the visual, colourful use of words, the structure and pattern of the poem. He was interested in the poem and where it was going. He could use use inference and he felt involved in the poem as he selected the pictures. These things had enhanced the child’s understanding and enjoyment of the poems.

The poems talk to me and the children and we talk back. They are about being human but as a child having cosmic powers.  You can relate to them or not – my child wasn’t familiar with the places Dom walks through in the video of the poem commissioned by  UNESCO, The Quiet Doors – but it helped him to talk about the doors in his house in Italy and in his new home in Longsight  that are important to his security. It helped me to understand him as a child too . That as a recently arrived child he had his safe boundaries and “markers” at home and school but clear and fond memories of his other homes. We were able to hear the poet’s voice as he walked and shared his poem and the child was seeing parts of Manchester he had never seen before and which prompted him to compare it to Italy.

To return to This Rock That Rock – there is just too much to say! The child had fun with the “easy” lines:

Learn to lift someone above you

from How to reach the Moon

saying it was about giving someone a lift if they didn’t have a car. Good interpretation. His interpretation of the end of the poem became quite philosophical. I mention this because out there in the world many people don’t seem to recognise the richness of languages of other people and I wonder, could I conduct a philosophical discussion in Arabic or Italian or give a response to a poem after only a few months in a country, even though I have a passion for languages? The children who come as “International New Arrivals” are amazing and in our school they are supported by a whole range of staff and children, who also speak many different languages.

I am always astounded  at how much new vocabulary the children acquire in a poetry lesson. I often add pictures to support and the children love the illustrations in Dom’s books. We looked at Swim, Shark, Swim!, Dom’s recent book (with stunning illustrations by Anastasia Izlesou) in my Year 3 lesson. One of the children, who is fairly quiet in English, started talking expansively about going diving with his dad in Italy. The “taking risks” with language is so important. Be confident about saying it, we’ll sort out the syntax together. They skilfully use the pictures to clarify words but also go beyond this and put their own interpretation on pictures.

That’s because – and this is one of the things we love about poetry – you can respond how you like and you can break the rules! I don’t think Emily Dickinson was too bothered about fronted adverbials when she wrote those inspired poems on the backs of envelopes. Meanwhile, is Virgil really turning in his grave thinking his words have got to be in the right order?

When we looked at a poem with some pictures intended to clarify some quite “demanding” new words, the child quickly understood the picture of people singing as “vocal chords”.

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

It is written
in the vocal chords for everyone to hear

from New Gold, by Dom Conlon

How did you know that, I asked? Because you said the word “hear” with it, he said having cleverly filtered through the words he did understand in English in order to make sense of the phrase. He did this several times. His confidence was sky-high after we returned to class and told his teacher, the wonderful Deanne Lee, that we had posted a video of the lesson on his class Dojo if she just wanted to mention it to the children.  A few minutes later she stopped her lesson and showed the whole class, which really raised his profile with his new classmates. Quietly Remarkable. He is definitely this.

In poetry lessons with INA children there are so many opportunities for talk, for misunderstandings, understandings, confusions and unravelling of language.

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

T S Eliot

Imagine actually being able to correspond with the poet for guidance and to give feedback to. Dom responded to a request from me for a poet’s reading for the children and he sent us his reading of How to Reach the Moon. To say it brought the poem to life would be an understatement.

We looked at the three languages the year 6 child spoke and made a grid: Italian, Urdu, English. We selected words from one of the poems and he wrote them in each language. Contrary to what I was hoping, there wasn’t too much similarity between the words in each column – although of course this similarity does exist in lots of words. It highlighted the fact that this child is operating in three very different languages. Many of our children do.

On Friday afternoon, my two Year 6 girls came to me. One of them has just started speaking English to me, having only spoken Spanish to me for quite a long time. She speaks increasingly good English but very quietly, even in a small group. Her friend came from Pakistan recently and is learning fast. Both speak fluent Urdu.

I listened to what the boy had told me about what he liked about the poetry and the lessons and based my preparation on this. I chose Dom’s poem Native American Moons. I used some of my ideas and asked Dom for a suggestion which I incorporated. (It’s always best to ask the poet I find!) This is a beautiful poem, the language definitely “demanding” – I only mean in terms of their level of English, but nothing is too difficult.

I teach my children to be confident about saying what they feel and think. So as they entered the room, they saw everything laid out. “We’re not going to write!” they said. “We’re not!” I quickly responded. “We’re playing games with the poem.” Within minutes they were indeed playing games with the poem, laughing, learning new words and competing with each other, telling me about their feelings and in one of the games, they ASKED if they could write. Three different languages were flying around the room, one would hover and land for a while on the table.

I rest my case. Never underestimate the impact of children’s languages or experience of language on their joy at learning a new one. Especially if you are privileged enough to have access to beautiful poetry and a friendly poet… and as my dad said, a job which is such a privilege.

Good luck to all of our Year 6 children at Stanley Grove and a huge thank you to Colin Catherall who is also moving on to a new venture and who has encouraged me so much to teach poetry in the way I love.