Poetry, a Universal Language
Thursday 2 October was National Poetry Day, and the pupils at St Christopher’s marked the day through a number of events.
During morning reading time the Junior children held an assembly, when a leading local poet, Mr David Hollywood, came in and shared some of his poems with the children. He was incredibly enthusiastic, and inspired the children when it came to creating their own poetry.
The daily literacy lesson was given over to the writing of individual poems. The theme for this year was ‘Remember’, and the Junior school pupils created some excellent simile poems describing something that they miss. Reception classes took time out from their Animal Hullaballoo Day to write amazing ‘Animal Zoo’ poems and in their French lessons Year 6 pupils read extracts from ‘Le petit déjeuner’ by Jacques Prevert.
A cross-phase digital project was also undertaken. Poems written by Year 7 students were saved to a new Literacy Forum, to be read, added to and commented on by the children in Year 6.
In the Senior School the theme for this year’s Poetry Day was ‘Remember’. Students in Years 7-9 explored the theme in lesson activities delivered by the English Department. They considered the significance of past events in their lives, reciting and writing poetry. Students in Year 7 were involved in a cross-phase poetry project, entitled ‘Remembering St Chris’. Students wrote Kennings poems about the teachers they remembered from St Chris Junior School. Some of the students were filmed reciting their poems and the videos were shown to Year 6 to see if they could work out which teacher the poem had been written about.
Year 7 students also posted ‘Remembering St Chris’ poems on the St Chris online forum for students in Year 6 to read, add to and comment on. The English Department ran a successful poetry competition with two categories for the most visually creative and original response to the theme and for the most accomplished poem. The winners this year were Anthena Puri, 8A, for her highly original ‘Fairy-tale book’ poem and Sarah Roos, 8C, for a moving poem entitled ‘A Spellbinding Tale – Remembrance poem’. Vansh Patel’s poem entitled ‘World War II’ was a highly commended Runner-up.
