Sept. 26, 2022
Since 1994 National Poetry Day has engaged millions of people with poetry through a range of live events and web-based activities for people throughout the country. Each year the day is given a new theme in order to highlight particular poets and styles of poetry. This Year’s National Poetry Day is on the 6th October and the theme this year is The Environment.
The National Poetry Day website has a range of resources for schools including toolkits and lesson plans and activities for Key Stages 1 and 2, free to download and all related to the theme of choice.
There are a range of resources in Purple Mash that schools can use to celebrate on National Poetry Day and throughout the year.
We are running a competition to support National Poetry Day – we would love to see your poems on the theme of The Environment and we have created a range of templates that children can use to create their poem, including: My favourite Environment Poem, Caring for the Environment Poem and a Climate Change Poem. There are also template for Cinquains and Kennings that children can use to create their poem. We have made our Environment Poems within Purple Mash free for all schools to use, you can access them via the links below.
The competition will run from September 28th to October 31st and all poems received will be put together into a Poetry compilation that will be available on both Purple Mash and Serial Mash.
There are three categories that children can enter:
The competition will be open to all schools and schools will only be able to enter no more than 3 submissions – either one per category for primary schools or one per age group. Poems should be sent to competitions@2simple.com by 5pm on October 31st.
We will then select one ‘winner’ randomly from each category, the selected poem will win the following:
You can find out more about the competition and how to enter here. We are also holding a webinar for our Poetry Competition on September 29th, you can register here and you will then be sent a recording of the session afterwards.
For free inspiration to share with your students watch the fun short series SAVE YOUR PLANET KIDS on the new Ecoflix Channel, available online and on all your smart devices.
FREE to all teachers, The Ecoflix Channel hosts inspiring and informative Nature and Environmental content that brings to life statutory targets for the Science and Geography national curriculum.
The SAVE YOUR PLANET KIDS series includes 20 short episodes of two-minute films depicting diverse environmental topics such as saving water, sustainable fishing, recycling, and pollution. Students will have plenty to whet their appetites and inspire their poetry.
Please click on this link to register and secure your free access.
There is also a free Teacher’s Pack that enables you to identify corresponding films on the channel that support each target lesson on the curriculum.
This film can also be used as inspiration for children. In 2021 Hot Poets commissioned 12 of the UK and Africa’s leading Spoken Word Artists to work with scientists, climate educators and engineers from leading environmental organisations and charities across the world, creating accurate, accessible and engaging poem about the work of their partner organisation – professionally filmed and released one a day throughout COP26. The poems were also shared live at the conference on the Science and United Nations Resilience Pavilions – to politicians, scientists and UN delegates.
These poems show that poetry and spoken word can go further, deeper, more imaginatively into the debate around climate change and the environment and can have real impact and engage more people, more positively.
There is now a wonderful collection of Poetry within Serial Mash, each poem includes a video recording and a range of activities to go with each poem. There is a teacher guide that gives an overview of every poem and the activities with a suggested age range for each one.
To celebrate National Poetry Day you can sign up for an extended trial for Serial Mash, enabling you to access all the new updates to the platform.
We hope that you enjoy #NationalPoetryDay and we can’t wait to read your competition entries, you can also share your work via Twitter, or on our Facebook page.
