09 July 2022

Pet Prime Ministers

Mayflower Junior Writers – 5 / Mayflower Young Writers – 4

This Saturday’s sessions of Mayflower Junior Writers and Mayflower Young Writers was led by Beth, online – which gave everyone an opportunity to show off their pets from home. We then watched a video of Joseph Coelho, who has just been made Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2022-2024, reading ‘The Power of a Poem’.

We looked at what Joseph Coelho wants to do with his time in the role, as well as previous laureate Cressida Crowell’s manifesto from when she took up the post in 2019.

We were then asked to imagine what our manifesto would be if we were Children’s Laureate. In the Young Writers group, we imagined giving free books to children in poverty, and getting children to choose what books go in the school library.

Next, Beth took us through some quirks in the English language, including words with silent letters (rhyme, write, knee, and know), exceptions to the i-before-e rule (weird, neighbour, ceiling etc.), and homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings (plain/plane; sea/see; hair/hare; flour/flower).

Also in the news this week was the prime minister resigning, which set up our next task to write campaigns for a new PM to take over. The nominees? Our pets! Or if we didn’t have a pet, we could choose any animal – perhaps Larry the Cat who hangs about 10 Downing Street.

In Junior Writers, Chloe made a campaign poem for her dog Steve to become PM, and included the homophone paws/pause, while Tess also drip fed some homophones into a poem for her guinea pig Ginger.

Rowan, from Young Writers, wrote a rhyming poem based on Joseph Coelho’s, that included homonyms:

KASPER THE CATERPILLAR MANIFESTO FOR PRESIDENT

Kasper the Caterpillar is always here

If something is wrong then he will come to hear

He won’t go off lounging on holiday nowhere near

Kasper the Caterpillar is always here

Kasper the Caterpillar is all but corrupt

He’ll won’t spend his taxes on things that disrupt

The wellbeing of those who he has one-upped

Kasper the Caterpillar is all but corrupt

Kasper the Caterpillar is certainly even

He will never allow himself no, not even

To stray just slightly from the truth all perceive in

Kasper the Caterpillar is certainly even

Kasper the Caterpillar will give you enjoyment

He promises well-paying yet great employment

There’ll be no drafting into a deployment

Kasper the Caterpillar will give you enjoyment

Kasper the Caterpillar is always truthful

He never tells lies and is completely ruthful

He doesn’t beat around the bush and is never untruthful

Kasper the Caterpillar is always truthful

Finally, we wrote an acrostic poem for Susmita Bhattacharya, who is leaving the group at the end of term.

In Junior Writers, we did ‘SUSMITA’ – Eva took the first S, Dom took U, Tess took the second S, Rebecca took M, Beth took I, Arsh took T, and Chloe took A.

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Pet Prime Ministers