Poetry in our Curriculum
Poetry is very important to us as we know it has many benefits to both children and adults alike. Poetry is proven to improve verbal and skills, vocabulary and memory. It also enables children to develop critical thinking, empathy and an insight to many different worlds.
For this reason, we do lots of poetry work at Greenacres! To begin with, one of our reading lessons every week in every class from Year 2 upwards is dedicated to a poem, which the whole class explore together.
We also have our annual poetry week every October, where a published poet and his illustrator join us for a few days to read and write poetry. Our annual poetry slam ends our poetry week beautifully!
This was Year 5 in our 3rd Annual Poetry Slam.
Each class has a poem that they learn, by heart, throughout the year. They perform this many times over the year, at the poetry slam, during family assemblies and concerts and also each class gets to perform at the Coliseum Theatre in Oldham at the choral speaking event each year. We believe that this is the best way for children to learn a bank of poems by heart that they should remember forever!
This was Year 3 at the Oldham Choral Speaking Festival.
Our class poems this year are:
Nursery: 'Art' by Andy Tooze
Reception: 'Have You Seen It? by Andy Tooze
Year 1: '1,2,3' by Michael Rosen
Year 2: 'The Three Singing Birds' by James Reeve
Year 3: 'If' by Rudyard Kipling
Year 4: 'Addicted to Chicken' by Joshua Seigal
Year 5: 'The Law of the Jungle' by Rudyard Kipling
Year 6: 'Don't Stand by my Grave and Weep' by Mary Elizabeth Frye