Poetry in Action presents Years 1 and 2 with a full account of the mechanics and much of the experience of poetry.

If children move into Year 3 having absorbed all this, they will be accomplished indeed. But it’s far better to have ambition than play safe: this teacher’s book (there is another, Popular Topics for Poetry) could be used with older children as well.

The whole sheme has six children’s books and a cassette. This book has a rhyming dictionary, a long section on poetry skills, holding good for any age group, and six projects: performance poems, concrete poetry, collecting poems, poems teaching numeracy, paper poems (where origami objects are made both in response to poems and as stimulus) and playing with poems.

There are photocopiable record sheets and pupils’ evaluation sheets.

Dennis Hamley