Poetry Day Ireland is a major one-day festival of Irish poets and poetry at home and abroad. This year Poetry Day Ireland takes place on Thursday 27 April and the theme for the 2017 event is “Poetry Connects“. Events will be taking place all over the country on this day to celebrate poets and poetry.
As Poetry Day takes place on a school day, schools are being encouraged to organise an event to mark the day. The Poetry Day Ireland website has lots of ideas for primary schools to get involved on the day. Some suggestions are:
- Organise a poetry reading of your favourite poems
- Organise a visit from a local poet
- Download a Poetry Day poster/brochure
- Use chalk to write out your favourite lines of poems on the school yard
- Celebrate the day online by using the hashtag #PoetryDayIRL
The Poetry Day Ireland website also has a series of adaptable lesson plans for primary schools, which focus on reading, writing and performing poetry, and are based around the humorous poem ‘Louder than a Clap of Thunder’ by Jack Prelutsky and on ‘The Sound Collection’ by Roger McGough.
The lesson plans are really practical and come with texts of poems and templates for pupils to write their own poems. These lessons would be great to do on Poetry Day. The lesson plans can be downloaded on the Resources Page for Primary Schools.
So, get involved in #PoetryDayIRL next Thursday.
