The Goldilocks test: getting our poetry teaching ‘just right’

The Goldilocks test: getting our poetry teaching ‘just right’

29/01/25

The poetry problem

It was a lively and energetic time in the Year 4 classroom. Towards the end of a unit on poetry, we had explored a huge variety of poetic devices and strategies. The working wall was plastered with the words SIMILE, METAPHOR, ALLITERATION, RHYME and RHYTHM.

The children were scribbling ideas down diligently in their exercise books, their heads nodding to the beat in the background. We were composing short rhyming verses to introduce ourselves to the world - a kind of hip-hop cypher they could perform together in a circle, taking turns to speak their truths.

The instrumental version of A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Can I Kick It?’ played expectantly. It was time.

Parneet (name changed) stepped into the circle:

Yo!

I’m a princess called Parneet

I love to eat meat on the street.

The rhymes worked and she managed to say it all with perfect flow, but something wasn’t quite right.

“Parneet,” I asked, “Do you… do you like to eat meat on the street?”

She shook her head.

“I’m vegetarian,” she answered, earnestly.

This was many years ago now, but Parneet’s street meat situation sticks with me as an example of the two most common challenges I encounter when teaching poetry in primary schools:

1. Children see poetry as rhyming, above all else. If their words have no meaning or are even the direct opposite of what is true… then that’s alright. So long as it rhymes.

2. Children thrive when we strike the perfect balance between freedom and constraint.

Poetry is complex, simple, proud, silly, protean, and solid… all at once. If we present poetry to the children as if it is just one thing, then we are doing a disservice to the craft. Kids can handle the subtlety and the nuance so long as we are clear in our explanations.

That’s what I didn’t do with my activity above.

I wanted the children to apply their zeal and enthusiasm for rhyming in order to create a little performance to introduce themselves, but I left everything else too open - I didn’t specify that they would need to make it true.

If I did add that extra limitation, then what they wrote may have been richer and more meaningful for it.

 

Finding a solution

We can think of our teaching of poetry writing as needing to pass the Goldilocks test. Her pilfered porridge needed to be neither too cold nor too hot, but instead, it needed to be just right.

We need to do a similar thing when balancing freedom and constraint in our writing pedagogy.

Too much constraint is going to kill any child’s motivation to write.

If children feel they have no freedom at all to put their own spin on things, they don’t experience it as a creative task. Because it isn’t! They are ‘Poeming-by-Numbers’, delivering you words on demand because you are the teacher and must be obeyed. Even for those children who do exactly as they are told, their success as a writer is hollow - the writing is not perceived to be their own. They lack a feeling of ownership over it.

Too much freedom is in many ways even more terrifying than too much constraint.

If children feel there are no constraints at all, they feel lost, confused and anxiously uncertain. ‘The teacher wants me to do a thing, but that thing can be pretty much anything, but if I do it wrong, that will be a problem’. Gulp. We sometimes dole out freedom as if it is a kindness on our part, but children feel safer freewheeling when they know the stabilisers are still attached, in case they tilt off balance.

 

So how do we find the right balance?

Getting it ‘just right’ is all about finding that perfect balance between freedom and constraint. Free enough that they have real creative control over key aspects of their writing, but constrained enough that they know the clear parameters.

This often requires us as the teachers to be very clear-minded when we are planning our sessions. We need to ask ourselves what it is that we are actually focusing on in this lesson.

If our focus is on helping the children to use poetry as a means to communicate life anecdotes, such as in Michael Rosen’s ‘Hot Food’ poem, then we can specify that their writing does not need to rhyme, or even that it should not.

Freedom liberates, but so can constraint. The limit we placed upon them - “Do not make this poem rhyme” - frees up their headspace to focus on what matters in that task, which is telling a fragment of a life story that is meaningful and interesting.

It is precisely because poetry encapsulates many different things, and can be used in many different ways, that it is so powerful.

Being mindful about how we balance freedom and constraint empowers us to help our children navigate through complexity with confidence, so that they don’t leave our classrooms holding onto those untruths like ‘poems must rhyme’, or ‘poetry is always funny’, or ‘poems don’t have rules’.

 

Resources to support poetry teaching

Collins Big Cat has recently published a collection of 12 poetry titles, which goes some way towards capturing the diversity of forms, motivations, feelings, and shapes that poetry can take. ‘Island Song’ by Nadine Cowan is a story in verse that introduces readers to the music and the vitality of life on a Caribbean island. ‘Star-nosed mole’ by Dom Conlon communicates rich scientific information about the animal kingdom in a range of poetic styles. ‘My Granny is a Crocodile!’ by Sarah Forbes is a nonsense tale in rhyming verse.

As children explore a more diverse range of poetry, they come to realise that their own poetry writing can be similarly multifaceted. And we, as their teachers, can be great allies in that process, when we give them both the freedom and the constraints that can liberate their self-expression.

 

Jonny Walker is a specialist teacher of poetry, mythology and creative writing in primary schools. He uses nature, music, art and conversation as fuel to get children's poetic imaginations fired up, running residential poetry retreats for KS2 students as well as poetry workshops in schools. He is Poet-in-Residence at Glade Primary School, an inclusive state primary school in Redbridge, East London. He is a qualified primary teacher and former Assistant Head. 

As well as teaching, Jonny is a children's author and published poet. His collection Heroes and Quests is one of the 12 new poetry books published into the Collins Big Cat Poetry collection.