News

'Blow, Wind, Blow', a celebration and ideas for use in KS2 classes

Date published:
29 Jul 2021
Reading time:
2 minutes
Part of Manchester Children’s Book Festival/Manchester Poetry Library children’s poetry series
Blow Wind Blow
Blow Wind Blow

Poet Dom Conlon and illustrator Anastasia Izlesou were joined by CLPE’s Charlotte Hacking and teacher Sarah Thompson from Plymouth Grove Primary School for a wonderful celebration of this third book from the ‘Wild Wanderers’ series by Graffeg. 

During this fourth event in the Manchester Children’s Book Festival/Manchester Poetry Library children’s poetry series, audience members enjoyed a gorgeous reading of the book by Dom Conlon, followed by a fascinating conversation that explored the book’s poetry and its relationship with illustration. 

Teacher Sarah Thompson, a huge advocate for using poetry in classrooms and whose pupils were lucky enough to enjoy a visit from Dom and Anastasia, talked about the huge opportunities the book offers to explore Geography, Science and History, as well as SPaG, PHSE and Oracy.  Sarah shared practical insights into how she does this with her classes and everyone enjoyed the short film Dom produced to showcase some of the wonderful poetry and illustrations that Sarah’s pupils created.

A Writing and Drawing Challenge

Manchester Poetry Library Director, Becky Swain closed the event by inviting everyone to respond to ‘Blow, Wind, Blow’ by sending in their children’s poetry and pictures and tagging in @MCBFestival @McrPoetryLib @Dom_Conlon and @Izlesou #WildWanderers.  The best of the work produced will be showcased in the Manchester Poetry Library children’s section during the Autumn term.

Ideas for Reading & Sharing and Writing & Drawing in response to ‘Blow, Wind, Blow’ can be downloaded below:

Watch a Zoom recording of the ‘Blow, Wind, Blow’ event

For details of ‘Blow, Wind, Blow’ and the other books in the Wild Wanderers series see: graffeg.com/collections/wild-wanderers

To receive information about future events in this series follow @MCBFestival and @McrPoetryLib or sign up for our mailing lists via our websites