The Peacock Walking Along the Lane

Group poems can be a really sparky collaboration between the students, the workshop leader, the teacher and the teaching assistants. It's getting everyone involved as the poem emerges line by line - re-read, edited, condensed or added to - in front of their eyes.

In the sessions in Boxford Primary (which were between 45 minutes and an hour long) I got the students to make lists about their Boxford lives and/or asked them questions about what there days were packed with. I tried to vary the questions and the order of them so each session was different. Then they picked out their favourite bit of their writing - a line, a phrase, a sentence - and we put that up on the board. In the second session a title quickly emerged when Isabel softly sang out her line. We all liked the way she did that and agreed that it should be the title and it should be sung.

But it's only now, after I've typed the poem up, that I appreciate the order of the lines that the class had suggested. I particularly like the wintry third verse that leads up to the chilling torture of the violin practice. And that repeating of the peacock line at the end and what that does to the previous line about the sister. And then there's all that kerfuffle - the squeaking, barking and hammering. So, altogether now, sing the title...

THE PEACOCK WALKING ALONG THE LANE Having to get up out of my warm bed

I like charging around my house

Pip & Ziggy under the cosy Sofa

Rushy barking at the cars going by

and there used to be Melissa, my oldest chicken.

There’s squeaking guinea pigs, squawking pigeons

Poppy and Lucy play-fighting

My Dad in his t-shirt covered in paint, building boats

All the hammering because our house needs fixing

The knocking radiators or my brother knocking at my door.

The slippery frost and crunchy grass

Sliding at the Spinney

Toes go numb, nose goes red

The climbing frame sheathed in ice

Having to practice my violin for one hour a day.

I love scoring goals, hate eating mushrooms

Thursday fish and chips £9.50 (including drink) at The Fleece

I hate going to the sea (it’s always cold)

My sister wearing a rabbit onesie at night

The peacock walking along the lane.

Year 4 & 5, Boxford Primary

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