Juniors celebrate National Poetry Day
Junior School pupils celebrated National Poetry Day, the UK’s biggest mass celebration of poetry, by looking at a number of poems and stories and getting creative with a host of activities.
Children in Reception and Nursery read ‘How Many Legs?’ by Kes Gray and Jim Field. They loved hearing about the animals, with their different numbers of legs, walk into the room.
Reception children pretended to be different animals and counted how many legs they would have in their room. They also made up a class poem.
Nursery had lots of fun talking about the different animals in the story and had a go at moving like various animals with two legs, four legs – and even no legs!
Years 1 and 2 read ‘Party Parade’ by Leanne Miller. Year 1 took inspiration from the story to create their own poem ‘Jungle Parade.’ The children did a fantastic job describing all the animals and had lots of fun making animal masks to wear as they performed their poem.
Year 2 enjoyed looking at the alliterative language and had a go at creating their own class counting poem with this as a stimulus.
“Eight humming horses hiccupping on holiday” was one of their favourites and the children enjoyed playing around with the language. The girls and boys also brought in their favourite poem to share. It was lots of fun and they discovered how much they love poetry!
Year 3 and 4 pupils enjoyed creating and sharing their poems together after looking at John Agard’s ‘On The Run From Colours’.
The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day, which celebrates its 30th anniversary, is ‘counting’ and Year 5 and 6 pupils explored the fascinating world of poetry through the lens of numbers and calculations.
They delved into the tone and mood of select poems from John Agard’s ‘The Day The Numbers Spoke’, discussing how these elements impact the reader. The children then applied their learning to create their own maths poems.
They were challenged to personify a mathematical operation and convey its tone/mood to the audience through effective word choice and phrasing – whilst also incorporating as much of the key mathematical language as they could and ensuring the poem remained cohesive.
Finally, they brought their symbols to life through performance. Everyone had great fun, proving that poetry can be both fun and expressive – even when inspired by numbers!
