What is it?

If you are looking for poems on certain themes, or material to inspire poetry writing, this “Poetry Texts” collection provides a good starting point, comprising texts plus ideas of how to use them in lessons.

What’s in it

The Poetry Station is an online library of poems on video, often read by the authors, including Benjamin Zephaniah and Michael Rosen. Many of the texts are for older children, but it can be useful for younger pupils to watch the poems performed and brought to life (uploaded by the English and Media Centre).

A collection of poems about the senses can be used as part of a topic on “ourselves” for young pre-school and Primary 1 (ericag).

Also aimed at P1 is a jumbled version of the poem “Jump or Jiggle” by Evelyn Beyer. Pupils can be asked to identify the rhyming words to arrange the poem into rhyming couplets (clementinek176).

A lesson plan for the Silly Stuff poetry unit includes nursery rhyme texts for pupils to play around with and change the wording (KitKaty).

Resources for Mother’s Day, on 3 April, include a poem by Roger Hurn that can be used as part of an assembly or as a model for children to write their own Mother’s Day poem (RogerHurn), and the poem “Homebaked Mum”, which reads like a rhyming recipe (angelaspoems).

Poetry for older pupils includes an assembly script used with a P4 class, covering onomatopoeia, rhyme and alliteration (gmmalina) and a tutorial with several examples of poetic composition, with an emphasis on proper nouns and adjectives, that can also be extended to include adverbs and be particularly useful in providing a frame for hesitant writers (AliceK).

www.tes.co.ukpoetry-texts-ks1.