Teaching Space

Teach the world's best poetry

Poetry is best enjoyed and taught by hearing it out loud and now that so many children are learning from home, we’ve brought together some resources to help you inspire your class about the importance of poetry and the fun to be had in exploring it.

We gathered resources here to help you teach poetry. There are activities for all key stages, built around Poetry Archive recordings and offering lively, engaging ways of working with poetry.

We've also included links to some of our favourite organisations who also provide support for teaching poetry so you should find resources to answer all your questions.

Glossary

Onomatopoeia

A word sound that suggests the word’s meaning.

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Getting started with the poetry archive teaching space

The Children's Poetry Archive can be a fantastic place to support teaching poetry. To inspire you, we've put together a few resources with suggestions that can be used with any poem in the website.

Listen

The more we listen to poetry, the more we become tuned in to the way meaning is conveyed through sound.

Try these activities centered around listening.
Learn

Learning a poem helps us to better appreciate and understand it and gives us a feel for its rhythms.

Here are some ideas of how to get children excited in learning poetry.
Write

Most people find writing poetry enhances their  knowledge of how it works.

These exercises and activities are focused on writing.
Perform

Performing a poem is one of the most effective ways to explore its music and its meaning.

This resource has activities all around performing.
The poetry-friendly school

A poetry-rich school environment is the best way for children to develop their knowledge and appreciation.

Here are some tips on how to bring more poetry into your school.
Mission

This fun guided activity by Laura Mucha walks you through her step by step journey to writing a poem. 

Follow along and write your own poem.

Looking for more teaching materials?

We have more teaching resources for you to explore, including Classroom Materials that offer lively plans and activities and engaging ways of working with a particular poem and Classroom Collections, our curated collections that provide new and exciting ways to explore poetry.

Latest resources
Activity
Children’s Poetry Archive Challenge 4

Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11

Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. These poems are all about family life and the different ...

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Activity
Children’s Poetry Archive Challenge 3

Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11

This challenge looks at poems about animals and some of the strange things they do. To find the answers, ...

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Learning Resource
Mission: Write a Poem Using The Archive

A white page can be intimidating. A white page can be so white that pens quiver at the sight of it. So, in order to write to a poem on ...

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Activity
Children’s Poetry Archive Challenge 2

Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11

This Challenge looks at poems about people and all the different identities that people have.

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Activity
Children’s Poetry Archive Challenge 1

Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11

This challenge is for our intrepid poetry fans to solve. We’ve set five questions about some of our ...

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Classroom Material
Michael Rosen: The News

Age group: 5-7

Since his very early work one of Michael Rosen's strengths as a poet has been his ability to engage ...

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Classroom Collection
Back to School Poems

Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, Under 5s

Poems that deal with the subject of school and education. Great way to the start a new academic year!

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Learning Resource
How to get the best out of the Poetry Archive

Whether you have heard poets read live or on the radio, or whether you've never heard a poet read, these tips are meant as a starting ...

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Classroom Material
Allan Ahlberg: Please Mrs Butler

Age groups: 7-9, 9-11

'Please Mrs Butler' is the title poem of one of the most popular collections of poems for children in the ...

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