Poems to Chant

The National Literacy Strategy has helped us to raise standards for pupils with learning difficulties. The Inclusive Readers Series is designed to support teachers in this area by providing attractive, stimulating and appropriate reading materials for children with moderate or severe learning difficulties across the 7-11 age range. It includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and could help to support a multi-sensory approach to learning. The Inclusive Readers Series aims to do more than develop children's reading and writing - it aims to enable readers to extend their knowledge and understanding, to develop a fascination with language, to explore a range of emotions and, where appropriate, to help them to deal with difficult issues. The books represent positively many aspects of disability, and reflect the cultural diversity of society. Each pack consists of a 16-page A3 (11-2/3 x 16-1/2) big book, with full color illustrations; a pull-out section of characters and images from the text to cut out and laminate for use in follow-up work; a teachers' book with half-term and weekly plans, plus activities for pupils at different levels; and photocopiable differentiated versions of the text at four levels (P5-6, P7-1C and 1C-2A) for use with individual pupils - the lowest level using words with symbols. The Poems to Chant Big Book is written by Maggie Walker and illustrated by Martin Cater. Spaghetti! Spaghetti! You're wonderful stuff, I love you, spaghetti, I can't get enough. You're covered with sauce and you're sprinkled with cheese, spaghetti! Spaghetti! Oh, give me some please. Long poems, short poems, fat poems, thin poems, poems good enough to eat! This is an anthology of poems selected for Year 4, featuring poems that can be learned, read together, or just listened to several times over sot he children feel them in their heads. All the poems have a strong rhythm and some, a rhyme; all of them build on a strong oral tradition. The Poems to Chant Teachers' Book, by Maggie Walker, Val Davis and Ann Berger, suggests work on the alphabet and increasing vocabulary. Pupils will want to learn some of the poems by heart, and the multisensory nature of the poems gives great opportunities for teachers of pupils with PMLD, too. Who can resist a good chant?