As part of our curriculum enrichment activities, we wanted to provide children with the opportunity to have their work published. One of the curriculum drivers at Birley Primary Academy is all about raising aspiration; therefore, this seemed a fantastic project that would allow all children to achieve the title of becoming a published author.
To help us achieve this intended outcome, we enlisted the support of children’s author and the academy’s Patron of Reading, Gareth Baker, to lead upon the project. As part of the project, KS2 children completed a workshop with Gareth himself which was designed to motivate children to write in addition to providing children with ideas that could be used within the writing process. Each year group have written a poem in a different style; these were list poems in Year 3, acrostic poems in Year 4 and free verse poetry in Year 5 and Year 6 with some of our pupils challenged to include rhyme within these in Upper KS2.
Towards the end of the project, a range of KS2 children also had the opportunity to work alongside illustrator Vicky Kuhn to create a front cover for the book as well as to create illustrations to place alongside their writing. Bringing all of the fantastic work together, Taralyn Books were able to publish the academy’s first ever poetry book, A Hurley Birley Christmas!
For more information about the project, read all about it on a news article that can be found on our Trust’s website: https://www.leadacademytrust.co.uk/news/birley-primary-christmas-poems Further to this, if you wish to purchase a copy of A Hurley Birley Christmas, click here!
