Shropshire primary school recognise the 'Power of Poetry'
At West Felton CofE Primary School, we recognise the Power of Poetry. We know that poetry provides children with a portal to rich and varied vocabulary, we can craft a firm foundation for verbal communication and confidence, we can play with words, learn their etymology and embed their spelling patterns, we can build our understanding of sentence construction and value the importance of each and every word.
But that’s not all…poetry can be an outlet for exploring big emotions or a window into those felt by others, it can shine a light on all those dark and hidden crevices of the heart and mind, allowing us to explore new perspectives with growing empathy and understanding for others.
And with this in mind, we reviewed our teaching of poetry. Our staff received training from Poet Laureate, Joseph Coelho and from the Centre Literacy for Primary Education. We wrote our own poetry spine including a vast range of poets and poems, which will be delivered to every child in school. And we had a huge whole school poetry competition.
Out theme was “Where would you travel?” and helped by Hays Travel, Oswestry and Liberty Travel, Oswestry our children set our exploring the big wide world from our classrooms. We crafted our poems, trialling different styles and content before choosing our favourites to enter. Then we invited the community to judge – from the Parish Council to the WI, from St. Michaels Church to Booka Bookshop – and they had a difficult job!
After a gruelling morning, the judges whittled it down to 8 finalist and eventually, an overall winner.
It has been a superb project for the whole school community and the poetry that the children have written is astounding. Every poem will be presented in a book which will be on sale as soon as possible and we hope to have ignited a legacy – the Power of Poetry.
