Allan always dreamed of being a writer, but first he became a primary school teacher. However, nothing has been wasted. The children in his class, his daughter, his passion for football and even being a postman for a while … all have found their way into Allan’s stories and poems. The final line is perfect as it breaks from the pattern of the two previous verses, but maintains the effective structure; After this, the teacher refers to the student as “my lamb.” This is no doubt meant as a term of endearment, but it also comes across as patronizing and dismissive. It’s clear the teacher doesn’t want to spend any time on this issue. 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.

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 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 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. Whether it’s Wordsworth recalling his schooldays in The Prelude, or Shakespeare’s Jaques describing the schoolboy ‘creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school’, poets have often written about school, whether fondly or critically, from the teacher’s or the pupil’s perspective. Here are ten of the finest poems about school and schooldays, teachers and pupils, classrooms and chalkboards.

The third part of the poem progresses in the same way, with the final issue being raised in the fifth stanza and amusingly dismissed in the sixth. 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.

I used this poem as a tool to help the children write their own poems, as well as getting them to replace ‘Derek Drew’ for their partners name as an alliteration. A lovely reading comprehension resource which explores the popular performance poem Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg and includes a differentiated version. Parallelism: the use of the same line structure. For example, likes one and two of stanza two as well as the structures of all the odd-numbered stanzas.

Anyone who is currently in school, or has ever been in school, will see something of themselves in at least one of these poems. 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. 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.The speaker continues, complaining again to Mrs. Butler about Derek Drew. The young speaker tells her teacher that the boy is taking her rubber or eraser, and she wants him to stop. The third stanza follows a very similar structure to the first. Then, the fourth stanza conveys the same dismissive attitude readers saw from the teacher in the second stanza. Please Mrs Butler was voted the most important twentieth-century children's poetry book in a Books for Keeps poll. 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 success of the poem, and the book as a whole, is that it speaks directly, humorously and humanely to children about everyday life in a situation they know well and spend most of their lives in: school. Ahlberg wrote his first book when he was thirty-seven, after a decade of teaching - a profession that he maintains is "much harder" than being a writer. He says that if he hadn't become a writer, he would have loved to be a soccer player. He was married for many years to fellow children's author Janet Ahlberg, with whom he often worked. Their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg, is also a children's author.