National Poetry Day 2025 teaching ideas

Celebrate National Poetry Day 2025 and inspire your students with these creative teaching ideas centred on this year’s theme of ‘play’.

What's included

• Five versatile teaching ideas exploring different interpretations of 'play', from wordplay to dramatic performance
• Creative approaches that blend poetry with games, performance and linguistic play, designed to engage even the most reluctant learners
• Clear age adaptations for KS3 and GCSE levels, with practical examples and scaffolding suggestions to support teaching

Available as a free downloadable PDF for all teachers, or as an editable Word document for subscribers to customise for their specific classroom needs.

Celebrating National Poetry Day 2025

National Poetry Day 2025 will take place on Thursday, 2 October, and this year’s theme is 'Play'. This annual celebration aims to foster a love of poetry and inspire people of all ages to make, experience and share poetry in creative ways.

Embrace this special day by encouraging students to explore different interpretations of play through linguistic games, dramatic performances, and playful poetic forms. Whether through analysing playground rhymes or crafting sport-themed verses, these activities offer engaging ways to connect students with poetry's expressive potential and celebrate this nationwide literary event.

Teaching ideas in this resource:

1. Explore playful forms - Introducing students to poetic forms like acrostics, lipograms, and shape poems that incorporate game-like structures and constraints.
2. Word play and linguistic games - Exploring linguistic play through puns, homophones, and made-up words, inspired by poets like Lewis Carroll.
3. Dramatic monologues: playing a role - Teaching students to write from different perspectives, exploring the theatrical meaning of 'play' while developing empathy and voice.
4. Playground rhymes and oral traditions - Examining traditional playground rhymes and games as forms of poetry, connecting verse to lived experience and cultural traditions.
5. Games and sports poetry - Creating poems that capture the excitement and vocabulary of sports and games, using rhythm and structure to mirror the movement of play.

Looking for more like this?

Explore our complete collection of National Poetry Day resources for more inspiring ideas across different themes and year groups.

Visit our Poetry Place for expert guidance from our poet in residence, Trevor Millum, featuring creative teaching approaches and activities for exploring unseen poetry.

Take your poetry teaching to the next level with our comprehensive teaching packs: Poetry Through the Ages and Unseen Poetry Pack (available to purchase or included with a Premium subscription).