This Thursday (21st March) is World Poetry Day 2024. This gives us a great opportunity to introduce younger pupils to poetry, and to get older learners enthused about poems. We love poetry here at PTS, so we’ve come up with some ideas on how you can celebrate World Poetry Day in your classroom.

How to integrate World Poetry Day into Your Classroom Time

Integrating World Poetry Day activities into your classroom time could be quite simple. From taking the chance to discuss poetry in literacy lessons or during one-on-one reading time, to asking learners to write poems about your current class topic, poetry can cover a wide range of themes and lessons.

You could investigate the poetry of other countries in geography lessons, find examples of poetry from the past to share during history lessons, and even read a story in verse during story time. Many children’s books are written in verse, but your pupils may not have connected rhyming stories with poetry.

Introducing Younger Pupils to Poetry

As mentioned above, many stories for younger children are written in verse. There are also lots of brilliant poems written for children. Our favourites include

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou

Now We Are Six by A A Milne

Listen to the MUSTN’TS by Shel Silverstein

The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Worm in My Pocket by Jodee Samano

A great way to start talking about poetry is to discuss rhyming words. You could ask your pupils to highlight all of the rhymes in a poem and ask them to think of some more. Or, you could use your learners’ current key words, and ask them to find rhymes and turn them into their own poems.

Different Types of Poetry

For older pupils, you could introduce different poetry forms. When writing poetry, some people prefer the constraints of a formal poetic structure, e.g. haiku or sonnet, but others prefer a freer, more modern type of poetry.

Why not introduce your learners to different poetic forms and ask them to choose one to create a poem based on your current topic?

Haiku

The haiku is a type of Japanese poetry with the following format: three unrhymed lines of poetry in which the first and third lines have five syllables and the second has seven. Haikus lend themselves to describing a specific image or mood.

Sonnet

Originally for Italy, the most famous writer of Sonnets in the UK is William Shakespeare. Shakespearian sonnets have fourteen lines that consist of three quatrains (four rhyming lines) and a final rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme follows the pattern ABABCDCDEFEFGG.