This week in English, we have been inspired by Christina Rosetti’s poem, ‘What is Pink?’ because it has beautiful imagery and beauty in its simplicity. ‘What is Pink?’ is a poem written in the nineteenth century telling us to look deeper into positive things to see their beauty and how they shine. We noticed a very clear structure to the poem: a consistent rhyming pattern; a question of colour followed by the answer to the question; and a description of the item in question which answers the questions ‘what is it doing?’ and ‘where is the item?’
We discussed what we would do if we were to write a poem like it. What colours would we choose? How would we describe the items? Would we only describe items of nature? What would we choose to describe? Do we have to use rhyme?
We brainstormed ideas on the board and came up with potential lines which we wrote into our English books. Once we had generated enough ideas, we shared our ideas with our talk partners and began to write up our poems by connecting ideas together and forming verses. Once we were satisfied with our poems, we performed them, firstly for our talk partners, then in small groups and eventually for the whole class. We thought about the rhythm, which words we wanted to emphasize, expression and pause for dramatic effect. Intentional pauses were particularly important because they highlighted the lines or words we wanted our audience to give additional thought to.
Many brilliant poems have arisen from this exercise as well as some fantastic performances of the poems. Well done Year 3!
