National Poetry Day is a UK-wide celebration of poetry. It is a chance to enjoy, discover and share poetry with others. National Poetry Day is an annual event which happens on the first Thursday of October. This year, it takes place on Thursday 5th October. Here at Pensilva Primary School, we celebrated a day early on Wednesday 4th October.
The theme of National Poetry Day this year was 'Refuge'.
Across the school, there were a wide range of events to celebrate and enjoy poetry. These included:
- a whole school assembly to introduce the day's celebration with adults reading poems that they had chosen because they enjoyed them or they are special to them
- In English, Wrens used instruments to perform a poem as a class.
- Doves focused on Kenning poems in English where we wrote our own tiger kenning. In maths, we recited number poems and songs and made our own number poem in the style of '1, 2, buckle my shoe'. In the afternoon, we added music to a poem called 'In a shell' and used different instruments to create texture. See photos of our amazing learning below.
- Puffins read the poem 'Nature Trail' by Benjamin Zephaniah. We discussed our place of refuge as being a green space e.g. our garden or our wild area at school during our forest school sessions. We thought about all the living things that we see and visit our garden during the day and at night. Finally, we wrote our own poem describing our experiences, emotions and activities in our green space. We ended our poem with:-
When you have a garden
You will never be alone
And I believe we all deserve
A garden of our own.
- Buzzards read four different poems about taking refuge. They then decided on their favourite and responded to this poem with a poetry review. Buzzards thought about where they like to take 'refuge' (their safe, most comfortable space). They used their ideas to write 'Collom Lune' poems. These are named after their creator, Jack Collum. A 'Collom Lune' is a three line poem. There are three words in the first line, five words in the second and three words in the last line.
- In the afternoon, Buzzards performed their favourite poems that they had been learning for homework, to the other classes
- We finished the day with shared reading, discussion and performance of poems: Buzzards with Doves and Puffins with Wrens.
We learnt that we are a school full of poets!