Poetry type and terms for SEN, Primary, Early Years and Reception

Explaining poetry to SEN, Early Years and Primary aged children of differing abilities. Use with poems of your own choice to fit in with your topics.

• Definitions and examples of 7 different poetry styles (narrative, rhyming, acrostic, limerick, nonsense, free verse and riddles). A matching worksheet is included to check learning.
• Definitions and examples of common terminology used to describe poetry (similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance and imagery). A matching worksheet is included to check learning. Can be used both before and after teaching to find baseline and demonstrate that learning has occurred.
• Differentiated poetry breakdown about poems for lower, middle and higher abilities. Also has an extension sheet for the highest achievers.

The differentiated poetry breakdown asks questions about the poem, what pupils did and did not like, how the poem made them feel, what type of poem it is, and for middle and higher abilities what words/phrases they would change.
There is also an extension worksheet asking for examples of similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance and/or imagery that has been used in the poem.

These worksheets work well with the BBC bitesize poetry clips. In the search bar simply enter terms like ‘similes’, ‘metaphor’ etc and short video clips will give some examples.