Poetry and the 3-11 Curriculum: Enhancing the Learning Experience

Poetry can enable learners to engage, learn and have fun, whatever their cognitive, linguistic or social levels and this book provides a great many examples of how this might be achieved. This exciting and innovative text provides a wide range of ideas for using poetry to enhance the early years and primary curricula, and therefore the learning experience of all children. Each chapter contains ideas for pedagogy and practice, underpinned by research and classroom experience ensuring that practitioners will come away feeling much more confident to teach this genre and better enjoy poetry themselves.

Throughout, there are discussions around specific pedagogies and practices relating to the use of poetry across the curriculum, as well as resources – including a wide range of poems from diverse countries and cultures and poems in different languages – and activities which can immediately be used in the classroom. Ideas are provided in terms of how poems can be employed in different subject areas, to introduce or reinforce concepts, engage children in more challenging concepts, ensure that lessons are fun and engaging and develop children’s awareness of other people and places beyond their immediate experience.

This book is an extremely powerful combination of informed discussion – drawing on ideas from different theoretical perspectives including recent findings from neuroscience – and practical suggestions for every classroom. Armed with this text, practitioners will not only have a very strong idea of how to use poetry to enhance their curriculum but also why this is such a compelling genre.

Virginia Bower has been involved with different aspects of education all her life. Starting as a self-employed businesswoman, she moved into primary school teaching and leadership, before moving to higher education and teacher training. Her interests are in primary English, poetry and supporting children with English as an additional language.