As we draw to the end of our National Year of Reading Poetry focus we have exciting news about a great poetry opportunity for schools.

Poetry by Heart is a poetry speaking competition for schools and colleges, open to pupils aged 7-18 and all school staff. Taking part in Poetry By Heart is all about developing confidence with poetry in an enjoyable, accessible and engaging way. Registration, participation and competition entry are free for schools and colleges in England. The Poetry by Heart team have recently opened the competition up officially to Key Stage One and below share how one school has successfully and enthusiastically participated with younger students.

You can find information and a huge selection of free resources on the Poetry by Heart site here.

Inspiring young learners, heightening the love of poetry

Since its launch, the Poetry By Heart competition has evolved through our close everyday dialogue with teachers and poets. When we opened the competition up to pupils in key stage 2 in 2019, teachers of pupils in key stage 1 were soon asking “can we take part?” Our funding didn’t stretch to a national key stage 1 competition, but we said “why not?” as long as it stayed an in-school activity. We snuck a few poems suitable for these younger pupils into our key stage 2 timeline anthology and schools did what they wanted, involving the whole primary school in all the fun of Poetry By Heart.

Now, we’ve gone further, and with the kind support of a Tower Poetry Development grant, we’ve created the 4+ timeline anthology of poems especially for pupils aged 4 to 7. With classic and contemporary poems on all kinds of topics from magic to cats, monsters, space and stars our goal is to help every pupil find a poem they like, so they can learn it by heart and perform it for others to enjoy. We’ll be adding dinosaur poems soon too! Emma from Kingshott School has very kindly explained what taking part in Poetry By Heart with younger pupils has been like.

One of the highlights in the English curriculum at Kingshott School is our annual poetry competition where every child from Year 3 upwards chooses, learns and recites a poem to their class. For the past four years we’ve had even more fun by combining this with Poetry by Heart. Using the Poetry by Heart resources and sharing their weekly poems with the children has been a great way to heighten the love of poetry and raise its prominence in our school community.

This year, coinciding with launch of Poetry by Heart’s 4+ resources, we decided to broaden the competition to include Year 1 and 2 children. It was incredibly helpful having a curated selection of poems suitable for younger children. Parents were also pleased to receive links to the easy to navigate website so that they could help their child find a poem that they loved. The favourite poems were definitely Christina Rossetti’s ‘Mix a Pancake’ and Vachal Lindsay’s ‘The Little Turtle’.

Next year, we’re planning on adapting our planning to make even more use of the Poetry by Heart resources to inspire our younger learners further.

The two poems Emma mentions here are really fun choices and if you log in you’ll find a slide deck on each of these poem pages that is a lesson resource for learning the poem together. Try our “food and cooking” filter to go further than pancakes, or try our “animals” filter for all kinds of curious beasts.

If you have suggestions of poems you’d like to see added to the 4+ timeline anthology, we’d love to hear from you. Have fun with poetry!

Many thanks to the team at Poetry by Heart, it’s great to be able to share with schools what opportunities are open to students around the country – especially now Poetry by Heart is open to even more students. The finalists will be finding out soon who will participate at Shakespeare’s Globe in July! You can read one school’s experience of performing at the Globe here.