Jumpstart! Poetry: Games and Activities for Ages 7-12

Used on my teaching placements - lots of wonderful ideas that really grabbed my class and enthused them. Really worked well with the English programme Power Of Reading which my last school used. I took lots of the games (i.e. the Tyger Tyger ones) and applied them to a couple of the poems from the POR set texts and supplemented some other poems with other ideas from this book - my class loved it. We had a poet of the day, poetry tree, class poetry book, poems of the day - when given the choice of a chapter of book or a poem it was a closed vote, they all wanted a poem!

Brilliant book, I really love it - it has so many great ideas for activities, either as part of a lesson or as starters. I used one of the ideas in the book for my first job interview (based on the poem The Magic Box) and got really great feedback - it does contain some lovely, effective and memorable activities. Great to dip into, but also ideal for lesson observations or interview lessons.

Poetry is a tough thing for many teachers to approach, especially with less and less children growing up with a rich oral/musical home life. This book is a rare tool to help primary practicioners get to grips with teaching this neglected area of Literacy.

I found many of the activities in this book really useful - my Year 6 class produced some great poetry. However, my 4 star review is because I don't find the layout of the book user friendly at all. I am always pushed for time and found I had to wade through a lot of text to find what I needed. I would find it easier to have the sections more clearly set out and signposted. For instance, I wanted to find an exercise on personification and virtually had to read the whole book to find one - it was worth it though. For ideas and creativity, I would recommend any of Pie Corbett's books, but would ideally like this Jumpstart series to be redesigned with busy teachers in mind!

In my view this is the best of the Literacy range of Jumpstart books. So many activities packed into the book that are easily adapted to non-poetry activities. My year 6 class have produced some fantastic poetry using ideas from the book. A must buy for teachers!