Poetry holds a special place in the primary English curriculum. It gives students space to play with language, express ideas, explore emotion and make careful choices as writers.
But despite its value, poetry can sometimes be squeezed into a short unit, saved for National Poetry Day, or treated as something separate from the writing that informs assessment judgements.
In our recent webinar, Write with Creativity, Assess with Clarity: Poetry in Primary English, I was joined by Tre and Pet from Dandelion Learning to explore why poetry deserves more attention, not just as a creative writing opportunity, but as a rich source of evidence for writing assessment and moderation.
The conversation was full of practical ideas for teachers, English leaders and school leaders who want poetry to become a more meaningful part of classroom practice. You can watch the webinar recording here.
Poetry is clearly valued in the curriculum, but in practice, it can sometimes lose its place.
One reason is confidence. Not every teacher has had a strong personal experience of reading, studying or writing poetry. If poetry does not feel familiar, it can feel harder to teach. Unlike some forms of writing, poetry does not always come with neat success criteria or a simple structure to follow. In fact, we really don't want it to.
There can also be curriculum pressure. When schools use schemes or tightly planned units, poetry can sometimes be squeezed out, or reduced to one form, such as haiku, rather than explored as a wide and varied type of writing.
The result is that students may not get regular access to poetry as readers, performers or writers. And when they do write poetry, teachers may not always feel confident using it as part of their assessment evidence.
This is such a missed opportunity.
One of the key messages from our conversation was that poetry can offer valuable insight into what students can really do as writers.
Because poetry is often highly concentrated, it can reveal students’ control of language, authorial choices, sentence construction, punctuation and tone in a very clear way.
A short poem can show whether a student can:
use figurative language for effect
make precise vocabulary choices
control mood and atmosphere
make conscious decisions about structure
use punctuation to enhance the meaning
write with a clear sense of purpose and audience
These are all important when making secure writing assessment judgements.
During the webinar, I shared an example of a Year 6 poem written after a detailed study of World War II. The piece showed strong control of imagery, tone, punctuation and emotional impact. What mattered was not that the student had followed a rigid poetry scaffold. In fact, the strength came from the opposite. The student had been given enough knowledge, confidence and independence to choose poetry as the best vehicle for expressing what they had learned.
That is exactly why poetry can be so powerful. It can give students the chance to show independent, thoughtful and controlled writing.
Before students can write poetry confidently, they need to experience it regularly.
Tre and Pet shared a simple but powerful idea: read a poem a day.
This does not need to become another time-consuming task. It might take less than a minute. It could happen after lunch, at the start of the day, or as part of another subject. The point is to make poetry part of the classroom culture, rather than something that appears only once or twice a year.
A daily poem helps students hear rich language, encounter different forms and build familiarity with poetry. It also helps teachers grow their own confidence and knowledge of poets, styles and voices.
And it does not need to be limited to the classroom. Schools could encourage families to read a short poem at home, borrow poetry books from the library, or explore a child-friendly poetry website together.
During the webinar, we mentioned several useful resources for teachers who want to build poetry into classroom practice more regularly.
Authorfy
Authorfy includes free videos of authors and poets talking about their craft. It is a helpful way to bring real writers into the classroom and help students understand the choices writers make. Check out Authorfy.
Children’s Poetry Archive
The Children’s Poetry Archive gives students access to poems read aloud, helping them hear rhythm, voice, expression and meaning. Explore the Children’s Poetry Archive.
National Poetry Day resources
National Poetry Day has a wide range of resources, including archived materials that can be used well beyond the day itself. Take a look.
Dandelion Learning’s Poem a Day project
Dandelion Learning’s Poem a Day project encourages teachers to make poetry a regular part of classroom life. Read more.
Poetry is not just something to read silently on a page. It is something to hear, speak, perform and feel.
Choral reading, repeated reading and performance help students internalise the patterns, rhythms and structures of poetry. They also help students understand how punctuation, pauses, emphasis and word choice shape meaning.
This, in turn, helps to transform their own writing.
When students perform poetry, they begin to understand that punctuation is not just something added at the end. It helps create an effect. They begin to feel how language choices change meaning. They see how writers use sound, rhythm, imagery and structure to make the reader or listener feel something.
This can be especially powerful for less confident writers. Poetry can feel achievable because it does not always require a long piece of writing. At the same time, it can challenge more fluent writers to slow down, refine their choices and understand that every word matters.
One of the challenges raised during the webinar was that poetry can become harder for students when they are expected to follow a strict form or force a rhyme.
Rhyme can be brilliant, of course, but when students focus too heavily on making lines rhyme, vocabulary choice can suffer. They may choose a weaker word simply because it fits the pattern.
The same can happen with rigid scaffolds. They can support students, but they can also limit creativity if the structure becomes more important than the meaning.
Instead, poetry works best when students have something they genuinely want to say.
That might come from a topic they have explored deeply, a story they care about, an environmental issue, a historical event, a piece of music, a painting, or a real-world audience.
Purpose and audience matter. A poem written to be performed in assembly, displayed in a local library, shared with families, published on a school website, or sent alongside a persuasive letter has a stronger reason to exist.
When students know why they are writing and who they are writing for, poetry becomes more than a task. It becomes communication.
Poetry does not need to sit separately from the rest of the curriculum.
It can be woven into geography, history, science, art, music and personal development. A river poem can introduce a geography topic. A war poem can support historical understanding. A nature poem can deepen children's understanding of environmental issues while strengthening their connection to the world around them. A poem about an endangered animal can provide a powerful stimulus for persuasive writing.
Poetry can also become a springboard for other writing.
A narrative poem might lead into a newspaper report, a diary entry, a sequel, a prequel or a persuasive letter. A poem that students discover during a daily poetry routine might spark a whole writing sequence because the class connect with it so strongly.
This is where poetry becomes especially valuable. It can build knowledge, deepen emotional engagement and give students a meaningful reason to write.
One of the most interesting discussions during our webinar centred on a Year 6 poem that demonstrated exceptional control, precision and authorial intent.
What made the conversation particularly powerful was that the teacher had not initially felt confident presenting the poem as part of their assessment evidence. Like many teachers, they had focused more heavily on narratives, reports and other extended pieces of writing when considering their final judgement. Through professional dialogue, we were able to explore what the poem revealed about the student's writing and recognise the valuable evidence it provided.
The discussion helped strengthen confidence in the evidence base underpinning the judgement and highlighted just how much the poem contributed to the overall picture of the child's attainment.
This is one of the reasons moderation is so valuable. Effective moderation creates opportunities to explore writing together, discuss what it reveals about a writer and ensure judgements are rooted in a secure and well-understood evidence base. Sometimes, moderation helps teachers identify evidence they had not fully considered. At other times, it helps them articulate with greater confidence what they already know about a student's writing.
Poetry can reveal independence, control, precision and authorial intent. It can demonstrate how a student creates meaning, shapes tone, makes deliberate language choices and draws on wider reading and experience. It can also provide evidence of secure punctuation, sentence construction and deliberate structural choices. In some cases, it may provide some of the strongest evidence within a collection of writing.
For English leaders, this raises an important question:
Are teachers in your school confident recognising and discussing the assessment evidence poetry can provide?
If not, poetry can provide a valuable focus for staff meetings, moderation sessions and professional discussions. Explore examples together. Discuss what the writing reveals about the writer's choices and intentions. Consider how the poem contributes to a wider body of evidence and what it tells you about the student's strengths as a writer.
The same pupil voice questions that might be used with any other piece of writing should also be used with poetry. Asking students why they made particular choices, what effect they hoped to create and how they wanted their reader to respond can provide valuable insight into writer intent and strengthen assessment conversations.
Poetry should not be viewed as separate from writing assessment. Like any other form of writing, it can contribute valuable evidence and help build a fuller picture of a student's attainment. Moderation conversations throughout the year can help teachers recognise that evidence, discuss it with confidence and make secure assessment judgements based on a rich and varied collection of writing.
If you want poetry to have a stronger place in your school’s writing curriculum, you do not need to start with a complete curriculum rewrite.
Start small.
Audit the poetry books and resources you already have.
Read a poem every day.
Explore a wider range of poets.
Use poetry across the curriculum.
Give students real reasons to write poetry.
Build in performance and choral reading.
Avoid over-reliance on rigid scaffolds.
Include poetry in moderation conversations.
Most importantly, help students see poetry as something they can enjoy, play with and use to express ideas that matter.
When poetry is taught well, it does more than support a creative curriculum. It helps students become more thoughtful, deliberate and confident writers. And it gives teachers rich evidence to support secure writing assessment judgements.
A huge thank you to Tre and Pet from Dandelion Learning for joining me and sharing their passion for poetry and expertise. Dandelion Learning supports primary schools with practical, high-quality English CPD, helping teachers build confidence in reading, writing and the wider English curriculum. They have also shared their free Developing Reading for Pleasure recorded training, a 1-hour, 45-minute CPD session for primary teachers and leaders.
You can also find out more about Dandelion Learning’s Complete English CPD Subscription, which includes on-demand recorded training, live events, course completion certificates and a free app.
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