Resources to use in the classroom

The Poetry Society has a wealth of free resources you can adapt for the classroom. In particular, if you’re working in Primary Schools check out Poetry Train, a collection of activities, poems, and advice for teaching poetry in primary schools. This was created by David Harmer and Roger Stevens.

Poetryclass

Lots more resources covering a huge range of topics can be found on our website, Poetryclass. Most are in the format of lesson plans, which you’ll need to adapt when delivering live workshops, but there’s plenty of food for thought! Each resource has been designed by our team of expert Teacher Trailblazers and poets. You can search by Key Stage and by topic. Key Stages refer to England, but the activities will often be easily transferable to equivalent age groups in different nations. The final page of this pack shows how different ages and stages map across the UK.

Further activities

Even more resources are available on The Poetry Society’s Learning from Home pages. Covering everything from abecedarius poems to poetry and mental health, there are video tutorials, themed activity sets, and reading recommendations for children and young people.

Page Fright

An online resource that brings historical poetry to life with contemporary spoken word performances. In these videos, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joelle Taylor, Hollie McNish and Dizraeli perform their own work and explore historical works afresh. Sometimes teachers, particularly at secondary school, will ask you to explore historical poems or ask you to focus on spoken word – although this is an archived project, these videos are great for both those things!

Poetry and Science

Created for the About Us project, a collection of resources exploring the relationship between poetry and science, including topics like earth and space, the human body, the natural world and the climate crisis. Each resource contains at least one poem commissioned from an expert-poet or written by a young person, with accompanying activities.

Further afield

There are loads more great poetry teaching resources out there. We particularly recommend those created for National Poetry Day (on a different theme each year) and Poetry by Heart, a poetry speaking competition for schools in England.

And for more interdisciplinary resources exploring the intersection between arts subjects and STEM subjects, check out the UNBOXED learning programme.

Some schools will book a poet visit as part of their Artsmark journey. Artsmark is the creative quality standard for schools and education settings in England. Schools work towards Silver, Gold, or Platinum Artsmark and have to demonstrate that their arts provision meets certain criteria and quality principles. Find out how The Poetry Society’s activity maps onto these criteria here.