Tomorrow is National Poetry Day and many teachers and librarians will be hosting poetry events in schools and libraries throughout the country. The theme this year is “Change” and a plethora of teaching resources have been made available.

The National Poetry Day website has a toolkit for schools with activities and ideas on how to celebrate poetry in the classroom.

CLPE’s Poetryline also contains an extensive range of teaching sequences, videos of poet performances, interviews and other resources to support teaching poetry in the classroom. There are also resources which have been specifically created for this year’s National Poetry Day on the theme of “Change”. Take a look here.

Here are some other ideas of how National Poetry Day can be celebrated tomorrow:

• Watch the “Writing and Performance Poetry Live Lesson” scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm on BBC.com. There are lesson guides available for teachers and activity sheets for students on the website, which can be downloaded beforehand. The Live Lesson will be followed by a talk aimed at teachers which will give some tips on how to teach poetry in primary schools. If you cannot tune in at 2pm, the Live Lesson will be available on BBC iPlayer shortly after it takes place.

 

• Get children to write poems inspired by the natural world and enter the National Poetry Day Schools Competition. This is a competition that is being run with Hamish Hamilton, publishers of The Lost Words. The winning poem will be selected by Robert MacFarlane. There are two categories – children aged 7 – 9 and children aged 10 – 12 and the closing date is the 5th November.

 

• Take a look at the shortlisted poems for the Betjeman Poetry Prize, a competition for children aged 10 – 13. The winning poem for this competition will be announced at 3pm tomorrow. There are also plenty of teaching resources and lesson plans ( KS1, KS2 and Year 7) available on this website.

 

• Secondary students can check out the winning poems for the Foyle Young Poets Award which were announced on Tuesday and are now available on the website. This poetry award is aimed at students aged 11 – 17 and the website has plenty of tips and resources for teaching poetry in secondary schools.

 

• Secondary students can also get involved with Amnesty’s Words That Burn project and write their own poems on a particular human rights theme. There are teaching resources available and links to spoken word performances on Amnesty’s website.

 

• There are some poetry quotes on the theme of “Change” on www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk which would make for interesting discussion or inspiration in the classroom.

 

Finally, make sure to come in and take a look at our poetry resources in the Curriculum Centre. We have created a display of poetry anthologies, particularly those that fall under the theme of “Change” to celebrate National Poetry Day. And here are some of the new poetry books that we have recently added to our collection.