Andy Croft attempts to get the Year Nine pupils at The Meadows Special School excited about poetry.
The Meadows, based in County Durham, is a mixed secondary for 60 SEBD pupils. Andy has been visiting the school for six years and has developed ways of including children with a wide range of academic ability, demanding behaviours and limited contact with the written word.
However, Andy can't always be sure his methods will work. This year his week's residency and resulting poems and pictures focus on trees; not just literal trees, but a "secret-tree", a "his-tree" and a "laver-tree" amongst others.
The children, who enjoy the wordplay and making visual representations of their poems, describe their relationships to reading and writing.
