The following is a reprint of an email I received from Josie Whitehead, a retired teacher and poet, that I'd like to share with you.
Thanks for linking to me via Linked-In.
I’m a “retired” teacher, and am sad to see a big decline in poets writing with rhyme and with rhythm/metre. So I’ve recently – in the last five years – and encouraged greatly by children in my local primary school, written getting towards 1000 new poems for children in this way – a little something to leave to the education world when I’m no longer here.
These poems are important for all age groups, but particularly for younger children for they help foster phonological awareness, a key literacy tool, as you will know. They are also great as performance poems too.
The above site is the first of five websites I’ve built myself – so you will see that even we oldies (for I’m 71) are moving into the world of new technology too – and the other four websites are linked to my books. These sites contain beautifully illustrated poems, many illustrated by children’s artists, and voice recordings which are good for both students for whom English is a first language, but particularly for those for whom English is a second language.
I’d be grateful if you could pass on this email to teachers of English, and ask them to pass it on too, as I’d like them to use the poems I’ve written in their classrooms. In fact many are doing so already for last year the poems went into 188 countries (602,000 page views) and many hundreds were chosen by teachers across my region of West Yorkshire for publication.
Thank you so much.
Josie Whitehead
Retired Teacher/Poet
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