We are pleased to announce the return of the National Poetry Day poetry competition in partnership with the Children's Poetry Bookshelf.

Children aged between 7-11 years old who live outside the United Kingdom and who are learning English as a second or foreign language will be able to enter the international category of the competition. Judging for the competition will be chaired by the UK's Children's Laureate Michael Rosen. The winning poems will be published on the LearnEnglish Kids and Children's Poetry Bookshelf websites, and all winners will receive audiobooks.
Find more details on the LearnEnglish Kids website:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-poetry-competition.htm

Here are some ideas for how you can use the competition as a classroom activity. You will find more ideas for teachers on the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf website:
http://www.childrenspoetrybookshelf.co.uk/Templates/adult/comp_2008_teachers_guide.asp

Introducing Poetry
If you regularly use poetry in your class, skip to ‘Introducing the theme’ below! If you haven’t used any poems in the classroom before it would be a good idea to give your students the chance to listen and react to some fun poems before introducing the competition. Choose poems that you think they will enjoy and that are appropriate for their age and level. However, don’t be put off using a poem because there are some words your students won’t understand; it’s more important at this stage that they get a feel for poetry and begin to enjoy the way it sounds. You can use pictures or mime to help get the meaning across, just as you do when you read them story books.
If you don’t have access to children’s poetry books, try these sites:

• http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do
  You can search by topic to find an excellent selection of poems. You may like to choose a topic that you have recently studied in class or just choose one that makes you smile.
• http://www.poetryzone.ndirect.co.uk/content.htm
  You will find many examples of poems here, some of which are written by children. Look in the ‘Poetry Gallery’ for examples of children’s work. There’s also a teachers’ section which has book reviews of children’s poetry books and plenty of advice regarding classroom resources.
• http://www.childrenspoetrybookshelf.co.uk/default.asp
  You will find poems that children have sent in to the website, plus a page of links to useful websites.

Offering ideas
If your students have never written poems before you may want to show them some different types of poems, so they feel supported and guided throughout the activity. You could just focus on simple acrostics or limericks, or you may want to give your students a broader spectrum of poetry. The aim is just to provide some support and ideas as how the students can structure their poems. For examples of different types of poetry look at the Poetry Zone website mentioned above (http://www.poetryzone.ndirect.co.uk/content.htm). Students don’t need to write a rhyming poem for the competition and it may be easier for lower levels if they don’t try. However, it could be fun to spot rhyming words in poems you read to them at this introductory stage. Higher level students, with a good vocabulary, may well enjoy the challenge of trying to make their poems rhyme.

Introducing the theme
The theme for the poetry competition is ‘work’. The Children’s Poetry Bookshelf encourages us to think of work in its broadest sense. The poet Mandy Coe believes that ‘work’ is a brilliant title for the competition as ‘work is something all of us do: adults, children, animals, nature and machines. The dictionary describes work as: the physical or mental effort of doing or making something. ‘ One way to open up the theme of work and to help spark your students’ imaginations is by showing your students some pictures and asking them some simple questions about the type of work they do. Download a copy of the worksheet from this website and cut the pictures up. As you show the students the pictures ask them some simple questions about work that relate to the specific pictures. For example, show the picture of the doctor. Ask students ‘What does she do?’ ‘Is her job easy or difficult?’ etc. Show the picture of the bee and ask students ‘what does this bee do?’ ‘Does it work hard to make our honey?’ etc. You will naturally grade the language in your questions to the level of your students.

Once you have developed some ideas you need to try and spark the children’s imaginations before they begin to write their poems.  This stage can lead on naturally from showing students the pictures. For example if you’ve been talking about bumble bees, why not mime the work they do as they make honey. Encourage your students to smell the flowers they are buzzing around and to taste the honey they’re making! If you’ve been talking about the fireman, mime fire fighters at work. Encourage students to really put themselves in the fire fighter’s boots and feel the heat of the fire and smell the smoke around them as they work.

Planning the poems
Ensure your students have enough time to plan their poem, they may well need quite a lot of support at this stage, especially if poetry writing is new to them. Encourage students to check their spelling, to change unintentionally repeated words, to check the tenses are consistent etc. To qualify for the competition students must have written the poems themselves, so although you can guide them and support them, try not to offer too much help! Also encourage your students to think carefully about the title they give to their work as this will help the judges make their decision.

Reading the poems
When the poems are complete, give your students time to practise reading their poem out aloud. Invite students to read their poems out to the group if you think students will enjoy doing so and encourage them to put as much feeling as possible into the reading. If you have recording equipment why not record their work and listen back to it later. If you are able to add sound effects or background music you could make a real special recording. Maybe you could invite some special guests such as the head teacher or another teacher with their class, to come and listen to the poetry readings. Making a special event of the students’ work will show your class how important their work is, and will probably become one of the more memorable highlights of the term.

Displaying the students’ poems
Even though the poems are for a competition, you could also make a lovely classroom or corridor display of them or even a class poetry book. If you have the time and facilities to make copies of the poetry book so each student gets one to keep it would be highly motivating for the children to take their copy home to show their families and friends. Although students are writing their poems initially to enter them for the competition, try and take full advantage of their (and your!) hard work on the project.

By Jo Budden, British Council Spain

When you have used some of these ideas, why not come back to this page and leave a comment below to tell us how your class went. Let us know too if you have any additional ideas!