Off by Heart ...

Poetry has always been a big thing in my life ... from reading it to writing it to ( best of all) reading it to children. It is for this reason I am totally delighted to discover the BBC's new idea 'Off By Heart'

Here is the idea: The BBC wants primary school pupils to engage with learning and reciting poetry. Every primary school in the UK can enter a child aged 7 - 11 to compete for the title of UK Poetry Recital Champion, and the chance to represent their school and region in what will be a fantastic BBC competition, shown on BBC TV in spring 2009.

If you are a teacher in the UK you just go to the website link above and register and then take it from there.

Here is the poem list
1. Alligator by Grace Nichols
2. The Way Through The Woods by Rudyard Kipling
3. The Pig by Roald Dahl
4. Daffodils by William Wordsworth
5. The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
6. Leisure by WH Davies
7. Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah
8. Matilda by Hilaire Belloc
9. The Tyger by William Blake
10. A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
11. The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
12. The Walrus and The Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
13. The King's Breakfast by AA Milne
14. Macavity: The Mystery Cat by TS Eliot
15. The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by WB Yeats

Here is my go at 'The Owl and the Pussycat'

Words, words, words ...

Words just excite me. In text or in speech the way that words shape thoughts and actions have always been a joy. Calligrams, words which explain themselves by their shape, size, colour and juxtaposition have certainly inspired many poets and the idea of creating shapes and patterns with words really does appeal.

I have just come across a Web 2.0 app that takes this to a creative place that I feel is stimulating and different. It is Wordle.

This is what they say about themselves:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.