A Poetry Teacher's Toolkit
Writing activity . . . Fish and Chips
As a weekend or half-term 'homework' (for your own class or even the whole year group), get the children to try to involve their parents in collecting phrases that fit the 'Fish and Chips' pattern. There are scores, probably hundreds, of them:
Mum and Dad, Up and Down, Chalk and Cheese, Warts and All; even a phrase with more syllables, like 'Thunder and Lightning', can be collected because it still contains only two that are stressed (poor things). And don`t forget rhyming slang: Apples and Pears, Dog and Bone. (See Volume 1 'Words and Wordplay', Chapters 2 and 3)
Give the kids team points, or whatever, for their efforts . . . with the highest rewards for coming up with any phrase that isn`t on anybody else`s list. Eventually, the complete collection needs to be accessible, perhaps displayed on large pieces of card. Challenge your colleagues to come up with any that you`ve overlooked. This is a phrase bank worth keeping.
I reckon that`s a worthwhile exercise in itself, but here's a writing challenge: construct poems that use only phrases from your list, even if they`re just four lines long. It doesn`t have to rhyme, but one way of starting would be to pick out pairs of phrases that do rhyme, like 'to and fro', 'come and go'. So you might write:
Back and forth
To and fro
Here and there
Come and go
This is treating writing as a problem-solving activity, which is what it always is really. And with a large enough phrase bank, it could be an on-going activity. The poems are in there, just waiting to be discovered.
Chalk and cheese, Husband and wife
On and off, Trouble and strife
This and that, Rights and wrongs
Over and over, Hammer and tongs (or 'tongues'!)
More and more, Rant and rail
Worse and worse, Tooth and nail
Bitter and twisted, Scream and shout
Thunder and lightning, Over and out
Again and again, On and on
Love and marriage, Dead and gone MJ
Well, I was in a mood that day! Tomorrow I`ll write something more positive.