For those embarking on assault courses - otherwise known as surviving the early days of teaching - poetry is one of the greatest assets in your ol’ kit bag, especially if it is short and funny and makes an impact.

Whatever you are teaching, you can always give the topic a boost by reading pupils a quick poem.

Don’t even think of using that Yeats poem you loved at school a thousand years ago. You can and should go on to more demanding poetry, but that’s not where you start with pupils you may have to win over. And never read a poem to a class that you haven’t first read aloud to yourself (and any lucky passers-by) several times.

Comic verse should be first into the bag, especially for pupils (five-year-olds to teenagers) who wouldn’t be seen dead near a poem. Recent collections with plenty of fun include this season’s non-macho book of footie poems by Allan Ahlberg, Friendly Matches (Viking pound;8.99), every bit as good as his earlier prize-winning volumes Please Mrs Butler and Heard it in The Playground.

Valerie Bloom’s delightful The World is Sweet (Bloomsbury Children’s Books pound;3.99) is her best and most varied collection, with some poems in Creole and others in standard English.

Grace Nichols’ The Poet Cat (Bloomsbury pound;3.99), which celebrates a pussycat in Nichols’ inimitable style, is in the same paperback series from Bloomsbury alongside Lemn Sissay’s first collection, The Emperor’s Watchmaker (Bloomsbury pound;3.99).

Michael Rosen’s Centrally Heated Knickers (Puffin pound;4.99) features 100 amusing poems on science and technology.

Younger readers may prefer Rosen’s Lunch Boxes Don’t Fly (Puffin pound;3.99). This one fits in your pocket, and Korky Paul’s zany artwork is an extra treat.

Faber’s themed anthologies of 100 poems have hit the spot with many adults - they aren’t all good for children but this one is. The latest, Heaven on Earth: 100 Happy Poems (pound;6.99), is edited by Wendy Cope.

Children’s lists feature similar crowd-pleasing anthologies by editors who know their onions: recent beautifully presented hardbacks worth the extra weight include John Foster’s A Century of Children’s Poems: 100 Poems From 100 Favourite Poets (Collins Children’s Books pound;9.99) and One Hundred Best Poems for Children (Viking pound;12.99), chosen by children with final selection and introduction by Roger McGough.

Adrian Mitchell’s A Poem a Day (Orchard Books pound;14.99), Book of the Month in TES Primary magazine recently (September, 2001), offers a superb range of verse, and Matthew Sweeney’s New Faber Book of Children’s Verse (pound;16.99) is one of this year’s most significant publications: a fresh and inventive take on the traditional anthology.

Excellent paperback anthologies include McGough’s The Ring of Words (Faber pound;12.99), with its stunning illustrations by Satoshi Kitamura, and Brian Patten’s Puffin Book of Utterly Brilliant Poetry (pound;7.99), which introduces 10 of the UK’s most popular poets. See also Andrew Fusek Peters’ fascinating Eastern European selection, Sheep Don’t Go to School: Mad and Magical Children’s Poetry (Bloodaxe pound;5.95).

For advice on how to use poetry in the classroom and get children writing their own, it’s hard to beat Sandy Brownjohn’s To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme (Hodder amp; Stoughton Educational pound;15.99), Jill Pirrie’s On Common Ground,which is aimed at 10-year-olds and above (World Wide Fund for Nature pound;5.99, order on 01753 643104), and Michael Rosen’s Did I Hear You Write? (Five Leaves pound;7.99, order on www.fiveleaves.co.uk).

A A Milne still plays well in early years and Reception classrooms (When We Were Very Young, Egmont Children’s Books, pound;3.99 paperback) and A Child’s Garden of Verses (Puffin pound;3.99), by Robert Louis Stevenson, has deservedly been in print since 1885. It may sound old-fashioned, but it has lasting qualities and every other poem is a winner.

Poems with a strong sense of rhyme and rhythm go down well with the very young, so don’t forget Edward Lear. The songs, “The Owl and the Pussycat” and “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat”, work better than the limericks, which children don’t always find funny. Ask for Vivian Noakes’ Edward Lear: the Complete Verse and Other Nonsense (Allen Lane pound;20) for Christmas - not only does it contain all Lear’s exuberant drawings, but it is the definitive version by his finest biographer.

“The Owl and the Pussycat” is now, of course, the official Nation’s Favourite Children’s Poem - you’ll find Lear alongside Rosen, Ahlberg, McGough and others in the very attractive BBC Nation’s Favourite anthology (pound;9.99 for a handsome hardback).

Raps are popular with children of eight-plus who enjoy making up their own as well as belting out other people’s. Tony Mitton has produced several volumes of raps, including Scary Raps (Orchard Crunchies pound;3.50), although his more serious collection Plum (Scholastic Press pound;4.99) is superior.

Be discriminating. There is plenty of derivative, lightweight verse around which does little to sustain, challenge or nourish young readers’ imaginations. Carol Ann Duffy does all this; her two volumes for children are every bit as good as her celebrated adult collections. Meeting Midnight and the Signal Award for Poetry winner, The Oldest Girl in the World (Faber pound;4.99 each) display Duffy’s famous wit and wisdom, toughness and tenderness.

Poets such as Duffy have potential for study across the curriculum because they tackle strong subject matter, as well as the perennial topics more commonly associated with childhood. While these two collections above work well with the top primary groups, try Duffy’s excellent Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss (Henry Holt) with older readers in secondaries - if you can find a copy; it’s out of print.

These books will help you survive the early forays into uncharted classroom territory and start you on a lifetime’s love affair with poetry that will no doubt reward you and make you a better teacher, especially if you share your enthusiasm with pupils. If poetry doesn’t work on the little blighters, it may help you recover when they’ve gone home.

Morag Styles is reader in children’s literature at Homerton College, Cambridge, and author of From the Garden to the Street: Three Hundred Years of Poetry for Children (Continuum pound;15.99)