This was an important learning experience for me but also, I’m sharing this because it is a great poem. I am aware, like my poem-deriding colleague from earlier, that poetry can be dull – but only if it is made dull. And this is the same with any topic/theme/skill I think…although fractions I’m still working on! 😉

Ask children to note what is going on in each section. What do we learn about the iguana and how it behaves: from the way it is described? and from the way people react to it? Role playing questions. CBBC commissioned him to write a poem for the Queen’s 80th birthday and he was invited by Prince Charles to speak at his Cambridge University teachers’ day in 2007. He is also founder & co-director of a national scheme for able writers administered by his booking agency Authors Abroad. I actually introduced this poem by reading it myself, in the dullest way possible. The children recognised immediately I was making a point. Then we listened to the performance of Brian Moses, the poet, found on the link. What primary classroom would be complete without Please Mrs Butler? Let’s face facts, this poem is virtually your birth right if you are in junior school and is certainly a poem that every teacher should read to their children. It’s iconic, it’s cheeky and it’s fun- what more could we ask for?

This poem was written by Brian Moses to celebrate an unusual sighting on the beach at Hastings, where he lives. Year 3 and 4 used it to think about animal movement and adverbs, and had a go at performing it themselves.

Brian Moses has been a professional children’s poet since 1988.. To date he has over 200 books published including volumes of his own poetry such as A Cat Called Elvis and Lost Magic: The Very Best of Brian Moses (both Macmillan), anthologies such as The Secret Lives of Teachers and Aliens Stole My Underpants (both Macmillan) and picture books such as Beetle in the Bathroom and Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe (both Puffin). Draw up a list of words to describe the animal. What might it be like to have one as a pet? How would it be differ from having a dog/cat/hamster as a pet? Elicit responses and note on a list through shared writing. Listening. Listen to recording of Brian Moses reading the poem once. What do you notice about the poem and its rhythm, rhymes, use of words? What feelings and responses do you have towards it? Listen to the poem again. Why is it unusual to take an iguana out for a walk?The Highwayman could also be the inspiration for children producing different types of writing e.g. Bess’s diary entries, a love letter from The Highwayman to Bess, a play depicting the meeting between Tim the ostler and the soldiers prior to the final shooting. A switch in perspective would also be intriguing, perhaps the poem could be re written as a story through the eyes of The Highwayman himself. Intentionally, I have not included the whole of the poems in this blog as some of them are fairly long. The whole versions are all easily found for free online.