Michael Rosen: Poetry for Secondary

In this event Michael Rosen shares some of his most touching and meaningful poetry taken from his own experience. The event will encourage your pupils to explore about how to read poems aloud, and consider where their own inspiration for poetry comes from.

A full transcript of this event is available to download.

If you only do one thing

We know time is tight, so here is just one activity you could do before or after watching the event. 

Poem of the week LIT 2-02a, LIT 3-06a, LIT 2-09a, LIT 2-11a, LIT 2-14a, TCH 2-01a, TCH 2-02a

To make your pupils more familar and comfortable with poetry, display a poem of the week somewhere in your classroom. Give the responsibility for selecting the poem to a different group each week– ask them to read some poems and agree on a poem, research the poet, write up some comments, recommendations etc. You could keep the scope broad, and encourage pupils to select a poem from a class anthology or by searching sites like the Children’s Poetry Archive(this will open in a new window) or the National Poetry Day archive(this will open in a new window). Or you can select a poet for them to research, and pupils choose their favourite poem by that author. Pupils can prepare a poster on the poem and present to the class. The poster can be displayed in class and change each week.

For shorter clips from this event visit the BBC Scotland Learning(this will open in a new window) website.

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