Great Poetry Book

Beware 'The Big Society' - giving 'power to the people'...hmm. Which people? Power moved from the (at least partial) democratic State to business. Classic neo-Liberal philosophy in practice - discuss.

On a lighter note, Carol Ann Duffy's book of children's poetry is great from start to finish. Perfect for (in the main) older children - say from Year 4 upwards into secondary and of course all grown-ups.

Finishing the process of saying goodbye to my colleagues at my present institution. Everyone has been very kind. It's not really 'goodbye' more 'farewell for now' as I hope to be working with everyone again very soon.

Old Possum's Children's Poetry Competition

Roger McGough to chair international competition

Old Possum’s Children’s Poetry Competition 2010

Roger McGough is to chair the judging panel for a worldwide poetry competition for 7-11 year olds. The Competition is organised by the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf, a poetry book club for young people run by the Poetry Book Society. To link with National Poetry Day on Thursday 7 October, children will be asked to write a poem in English on the theme of ‘Home’.

Now in its fifth year, the competition is open to both individuals and schools. Cash prizes of £250 for first prize, £100 for second and £50 for third will be awarded, along with books and CPB memberships, in two age groups, 7-8 year-olds and 9-11 year-olds. Entries will be accepted from Friday 10 September, up until the closing date of Friday 15 October. The winners will be announced at a gala celebration in London in December.

The British Council partnership, now in its third year, will continue to encourage entries to the ‘International Learner category’ for children based outside the UK who are learning English as a foreign or second language.

The Old Possum’s Children’s Poetry Competition will encourage children to write poems of their own and help teachers to bring poetry alive in the classroom. A teacher’s guide to accompany the competition will be available to download from the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf website (http://www.childrenspoetrybookshelf.co.uk/) from early September, along with further information about the competition.

Post UKLA conference

The weekend was all about the United Kingdom Literacy Association conference in Winchester.

I gave a Key note speech on the Friday afternoon on the content of the book I'm writing called 'Literacy on the Left'. People came to me afterwards and throughout the conference saying how much they had enjoyed it. Which is really pleasing - some of the comments were quite over-whelming in the warmth of their praise. Yet, as I expected, I felt opinion was divided over all.

The main trust of my argument, as I saw it, was the divide on the 'left' between post-structuralist and Marxists and how each side see the objective of their approach to literacy teaching as very different. I said at the start of the lecture, as I write in the introduction of the book, opinions are passionately divided with each group seeing the other as wrong-headed, naive or even politically right wing (see McLaren, Hill, Cole etc on the Marxist side). I suspect that my own views on this divide came through and consequently, for some, I was not 'flavour of the month'. Still, I have never heard a lecture at UKLA before that explored these themes and debates. Post structuralist and post modernist perspectives are very prevalent within the world of literacy research in universities and perhaps it is useful and timely to look again at the politics of what we believe and try to implement in classrooms.

The picture is of Lenin and his wife Krupskaya who was responsible for post revolution education policy in Russia. For my book, it is crucial to examine what these Marxists did. I'm reminded of James Bond Films by the presence of the pussy cat.

New book on its way

There is a new book coming out on teaching early reading and phonics from Sage. We wanted to call it the sensible way to teach phonics, but the publishers preferred 'creative' - OK, we went with that.

It may not fit into the new coalition government's vision for the teaching of early reading, but its purpose is to provide both the rationale and practical ideas to teach reading (not just 'decoding') to young children.