Are you ready for National Poetry Day next week? It’s the 25th anniversary this year and the theme is Truth. On the National Poetry Day website, there is a toolkit available for schools to download and lots of resources for any teachers who are getting their students to take part in the #MyNPDPoem poetry writing challenge.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Day, videos have been created of poets reading their work and discussing the theme of Truth and the ideas in their poems. Poets featured include Karl Nova, Michael Rosen, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Joseph Coelho and Rachel Rooney and the videos can be accessed on YouTube.
For those of you looking to get your students writing some poetry, The National Literacy Trust and Simon Mole, their digital poet in residence, have created a KS2 lesson plan on the theme of truth (available in the Curriculum Centre) and an accompanying YouTube video.
CLPE’s Poetryline also has plenty of teaching resources and videos of poems being read by poets.
You can access a list of poetry books for children on the Wordsforlife website, aswell as some tips for writing poems by Joseph Coehlo.
On National Poetry Day, a poetry recitation competition will be launched for young people aged 14 – 18 years old.
The winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, a competition for poets aged 11 – 17, will also be announced next week, just before National Poetry Day.
And the winner of the 2019 Betjeman Poetry Prize, a poetry competition for children between the ages of 10 – 13, will be announced on National Poetry Day at 3pm. Good luck to all of the six finalists.
Whatever you decide to do to celebrate the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Day, I hope you all have fun!
