On Tuesday I woke up in a Docklands Travelodge then made my way on the DLR to Star Primary School in Newham for a fantastic day in Year 5 and 6.
The kids were focused and lovely, just brimming with ideas. We made whole class poems called ‘Keeping the Creature’. The only rule was we could not name the creature!
Three different classes created three very different poems. The children worked in pairs to provide a line each, which their lovely class teacher typed onto the IWB. Then we worked together to edit what we had. This led to detailed and challenging conversations around the classroom about line endings, verb tense, choice of words, finding the last line, finding the first line, beat and rhythm – and more.
Thank you Star Primary!
JEAN ATKIN 
Marvellous! I love the idea of writing the words directly onto a white board. Would solve the problem of my hurried difficult to read handwriting when doing this work in residential care….