Celebrating National Poetry Day 2022: teaching ideas
Three engaging and unusual teaching ideas to help you to celebrate National Poetry Day in 2022 with your KS3-5 students.
Taking this year's theme of the environment as the starting point, poet Trevor Millum shares his creative ideas to encourage students' own poetry writing experiments.
Including sentence starters and prompts, students explore the idea of contrasts as a starting point for their poem. They also consider how a form such as a narrative poem, a fable or a rap might work as a way to express their ideas about this topic.
A teaching idea for celebrating National Poetry Day 2022:
1. Playing with contrasts
One (of many) patterns for a poem about the environment could involve some contrasts. Reluctant or struggling writers often benefit from some starter sentences or prompts such as:
Some might see ……… (e.g. grass and trees)
But I see ……… (e.g. the horse chestnut laden with its candles)
Some might not notice ……… (e.g. the birdsong)
But I see / hear / smell ……… (e.g. the blackbird’s insistent call)
I can see / hear / smell ………Where others only ………
In contrast, a more critical approach could be:
They see ……… (e.g. stylish SUV)
I see ……… (a planet destroyer / a CO2 creator)
They see ……… (e.g. a pretty dress)
I see ……… (e.g. children sweating in far-off factories)
