Teachers around New Zealand are currently using William Carlos Williams’ famous poem This is just to say (below) to get children to admit their naughtiest deeds.
Photo: 123RF
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
It works because the poem is so simple and yet so human, primary school teacher Sarah told Jesse Mulligan.
“We’ve all done something naughty at some point in our lives and probably come up with an excuse for that, even if it’s not such a great excuse.”
A company called School Kit sends boxes of educational activities to schools all around New Zealand. The poetry provocation activity has gone out to 3000 schools.
“The gist of the project is that eventually we do a swap where we’ve written a bunch of poems that get sent to a school somewhere else in the country and they send a big bag full of their poems back to us.”
Sarah says she had a discussion with her Year 7 and 8 students about the exercise telling them whatever they wrote would be fully anonymous, there would be no judgement.
“We talked about a naughty thing they had done, and we had a conversation together where they all sort of owned up to these various misdeeds of various size.”
They then talked about the William Carlos Williams poem and why he was owning up to his misdeed.
The kids didn’t have a rigid structure to follow other than starting with ‘I have’ and including the line ‘Forgive me’ because Sarah says it’s important as a turning point in the poem.
The following is a collection of student poems:
I have eaten all the icing
off your birthday cake
You were probably looking forward to eating it
Forgive me
It was your famous icing
So creamy
And melt in your mouth
I just couldn’t stop scooping it
Into my chubby little face
PS.
You would have enjoyed it
***
This is just to say
I’ve poured water on my brother
You were probably upset
Because he was soaked
Forgive me
It was to help him grow
***
This is just to say
I have thrown
The wooden model
that we made
You were probably
Wondering
What happened to it
Forgive me
I couldn’t be bothered
***
This is just to say
I have broken
through the child’s car seat lock
On the motorway
You probably thought
I couldn’t escape
And I would be safe
Forgive me
I just love travelling
And wanted to see
where we were going
Sarah says getting the kids to sit down and write these poems is a real "ice breaker".
"We take kids from several feeder schools and a lot of them haven't met each other before and having an opportunity to just sit down and laugh at all of the naughty things each other has done was a great way to start the year off."
