A School Trip
Our class climbs into the massive orange spaceship
We’re all going to the moon today!
Mr Lavin says we can sing Happy Birthday
to our spaceship driver, Frank. We’re off! Yay!
The welcome centre is amazing! We are given
maps, jet packs, instructions, and are split into groups.
We set off into the ricky, bright, crater-filled landscape.
Stars are silver in the royal blue sky, boulders are red, yellow and indigo.
What’s that in front of us? It’s weird and it’s shouting
‘I want to eat you!’ Oh no, can our teacher save us?
Another alien, green with purple and blue spots, bounces up on a space hopper
and zaps the child-cruncher with its lazer finger.
It’s the end of our tour. Time for lunch and shopping.
We can go to MoonDonalds, Lunar King, Moon Pizzas or eat our packed lunches.
In the shop you can buy jelly aliens, flying saucers and haribou moon mix.
There’s alien rock and boxed astronauts. Buggies are good but too dear.
Our homeward trip is different. We’re all tired. We go
to sleep inside an egg, spinning back through strange skies,
watching a film of our wonderful day on the Moon. We land
near school, return to normal size. Our mums and dads are waiting
to take us home. We get our coats and bags, say thank you to the teachers.
This was the best trip ever!
To arrive at this poem, we decided on a topic incorporating as many ideas as possible, thought about how we could divide it up into groups and what order would make most sense. The groups came up with the ideas, fed it back to me and I drew it all together to show how to build up a poem.
Angela Topping 
Excellent. I love group poems like these. hey always produce such wonderful results for the kids!
Hi Angela,
Sounds like it was great fun for the kids of St. Mary’s, this school trip into the inner space of their imaginations! And what a boost for them, to see their story-poem published on your blog.
What will stay with them, I’m sure, is the thrill of exploring their own creativity and power over words, coupled with the satisfaction of bringing into being a piece of vivid writing that didn’t exist before. In years to come, some of your Able Writers might well contribute good works to Literature; a few might even contribute great works.
Look forward to seeing you at BLAZE. Has a date been set yet?
Best wishes, Paul
Put 22nd February in you diary Paul. Haven’t booked it with the pub yet but am sure it will be ok.
This poem was just one part of an amazing day – these children were so creative and the entire school is a massively creative environment.