Haircut' depicts a common fear in many children's lives - standing out. At school consistency is key; the minute you change your appearance someone will have something to say about it. Ahlberg captures the annoyance at being told the blatantly obvious; What he doesn’t like is having to go to school. The ‘cruel eye’ of the stern schoolmaster makes school anything but a pleasant experience. The boys all sit unhappily in ‘sighing and dismay’, and the schoolboy speaker sits drooping in his chair, anxious and unhappy, unable to learn …

Please Mrs Butler was a poem book that was read to me while in primary school and i still think it is a really fun book. It relates to school life and highlights different incident within the school. A child continually asks her teacher what to do about a boy who is constantly disturbing her, copying work and stealing rubbers. These are likely incidents all children have experienced while in school which makes it relevant to them. The unexpected responses the teacher gives makes the book humours and comical. The Short paragraphs and the repetition allow the children to anticipate what will come next, encouraging their participation. It is also a book children can easily read independently. From the opening verse of the first poem it is easy to see how beneficial such a collection is to a child's understanding of the features of the literary form such as structure, verse, rhythm and rhyming couplets: A lovely reading comprehension resource which explores the popular performance poem Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg and includes a differentiated version. This poem humorously mentions the typical incidents that children may experience while in school which allows them to relate to the poem more. What makes the poem comical, is the unexpected responses that are given from the teacher. Baldwin, Emma. "Please Mrs. Butler by Allan Ahlberg". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/allan-ahlberg/please-mrs-butler/. Accessed 1 November 2023.I have been reading the poems from this book over and over from my own childhood as I enjoyed them so much from a young age. Now, as a teacher, I see them for more than their entertainment value.

This is a light hearted, humorous verse written about playtime. I like the way it is easy to read as a verse and by adding a touch of humour to a subject all children can relate to gives added interest to the listener. Allan Ahlberg is best known for his school poems. There are poems about lost scissors, the class hamster, making friends and falling out, the excitement of a stray dog in playground – and the infamous Derek Drew! He captures the noisy playground moments as well as the quiet -thinking-in-the-corner moments. He notices the small, absurd things that go on all the time in every school.

Allan Ahlberg

Differentiated group activities Using the technique of text marking the children are to find and mark the different sections of the poem, identifying any patterns that they notice. This begins with noting the rhymes in individual stanzas; and could lead on to how the six stanzas are divided up into 3 'sections'. discussed the way the poet has organised the poem into sections which develop or move on the 'story' of the poem; There aren’t many modern or contemporary poems which recall schooldays with affection, but ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’ does just that. Duffy paints a fond picture of her time at primary school and on the brink of adolescence, powerfully suggested by the poem’s final image of the sky breaking into a thunderstorm.

In the first lines of this poem, the speaker, a young student, begins by asking their teacher what to do about a boy copying their school work. Because the child says “This boy” when referring to “Derek Drew,” it seems like the speaker is a young girl. The final line is perfect as it breaks from the pattern of the two previous verses, but maintains the effective structure; Allan Ahlberg is one of the UK's most acclaimed and successful authors of children's books - including the best-selling Jolly Postman series. Born in Croydon in 1938, he was educated at Sunderland Technical College. Although he dreamed of becoming a writer since the age of twelve, his route to that goal was somewhat circuitous. Other jobs along the way included postman (not an especially jolly one, he recalls), gravedigger, plumber, and teacher. I read this poem to my year 1 class during BSE and they absolutely enjoyed it. Although this poem is fairly outdated, the comical content still produced a lot of laughter from the children. Moreover, the repetitive nature of the poem engaged the children to participate in the reading of the poem. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.Allan is perfectly tuned in to the language of the classroom, the playground and the kitchen table. His first book of school poems was published over thirty years ago, but you will almost certainly recognise some of the things that the children, teachers and parents say. (So will your teachers, we’re willing to bet!) In ‘Please Mrs Butler’, you can hear him speak with voice of the teacher and the child. Both sound more and more desperate. This is a brilliantly child friendly book that they can relate to due to the wording and the way the poems are written. Children will really love the poems as they are a focussed around children's everyday lives and their lives within school. The poems are also written in a way that adults can relate to, as quite often the poem is from the view point of the teacher or the adult. There are many types of poetry used throughout the book, mainly written to sound like children speaking, and also full of humour.

The italics used to emphasise the "our" and "other" make the verse very effective for reading aloud to a class, and the children can have great fun joining in with this. The rhyming words and structure of the poem can be demonstrated in a literacy lesson.Allan Ahlberg (5 June 1938) and Janet Ahlberg (21 October 1944 – 13 November 1994) , née Janet Hall, were a British married couple who created many children's books, including picture books that regularly appear at the top of most popular lists for public libraries. Discover more classic poetry with these poems about work, these poems about animals of all kinds, these fine devotional and religious poems, and these poems for birthday occasions.