Schools
1. Plan your celebration
Decide what you want the day to achieve, eg:
• Students, staff and families enjoy poetry.
• Show that anyone can be a poet.
• Review poetry's impact on wellbeing, literacy and motivation.
What activities will help you achieve your aims?
• Display a poem from our trove here.
• Have a whole school poetry party or slam.
• Invite a poet to an assembly or to visit a class.
How will you celebrate what you have achieved?
• Please list any events on our map.
• Make displays to showcase activities.
• Tag us in any posts you share online #NationalPoetryDay .
2. Inspiration
Try our easy to use resources for all ages - ideal for starters or full lesson plans.
Meet our ambassadors and experience poetry performed on our YouTube channel.
Host a poet visit - use our guide to get the most from the day.
3. Keep poetry on the programme
Enjoying poetry can become part of everyday school life, so try these ideas to keep the momentum going:
• Encourage classes and individual pupils to share poems via display boards, in class, in assemblies and online. You can also learn about copyright with your students with help from the ALCS, our key supporter.
• Feature a “Poem of the Week” on your display boards. Teachers and students could take it in turn to choose – have lots of sticky notes available so pupils can put their thoughts and responses up around the poem.
• Try learning poems by heart, writing for pleasure, and more, with our world class poetry partners and their resources.