Writing personification poetry – a strand of writing
Year 6 completed a two-week poetry unit in the Spring term. This included looking at a poem called “The Sea is a Dog” by James Reeves.
In his poem, James Reeves personifies the sea, giving it the attributes of a playful dog. A number of children speculated that he may have been someone, who owned a dog and walked it by the sea, inspiring him to see connections between the two.
The Year 6 children used this technique to write their own, original personification poems about a natural phenomenon that spoke to them. Some examples included:
- Comparing a storm to an angry giant.
- Comparing a volcano to a raging dragon.
- Comparing the wind to a swift wolf.
- Comparing the stars at night to dancers.
- Comparing shadows to a panther.
- Comparing the Northern Lights to
The children learnt how the length of lines need to be adjusted to help the reader achieve the correct rhythm, that poets often use phrases rather than sentences to create image, and that well-chosen synonyms can make a huge difference to the overall impression. Although poems are often shorter than narrative texts, the children need a great deal of thought and effort needs to be put into them to make them effective.
Please enjoy the videos below of the children performing their original poems.
