Penguin's Poems by Heart

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The competition is created by The Full English and supported by the Department of Education with a consortium of partners including The Poetry Society, Homerton College, the University of Cambridge, The Poetry Archive, Stephen Spender Trust, The English Association, National Poetry Day, CLPE, Shakespeare’s Globe, OED and NATE. It is one of the most memorable poems of all time. In this beautiful piece, William Wordsworth describes how a simple rainbow mesmerizes his heart. Through its simplicity, it reveals some deeper concepts regarding spirituality and romanticism. This poem centers chiefly on a rainbow, a symbolic representation of nature and how the poet wishes to keep his childlike self alive. Here’s the full text of the poem: The poems have been chosen by Morag Styles, retired professor of children’s poetry at the University of Cambridge and trustee of the Poetry Archive. Each one is accompanied by a suggested activity. And then there's Kaiti Soultana, winner of the Poetry By Heart Competition in 2013, whose successfully committed a chunk of the early English poem Sir Garwain and the Green Knight to memory. He'll find out from her how the poetry learning initiative of the last few years has fared and whether his passionate enthusing will be well received. And then there's Michael Rosen, former Children's Laureate, who continues to encourage kids not only to read and learn poetry but to write it as well. Those with warm memories are often ardent, lifelong advocates of learning a poem by heart, but their experience can be so embedded in particular relationships and contexts that it can be harder to tease out a more generalisable set of ideas about the value to children’s learning. What exactly are the benefits to children of learning a poem by heart? In ten years of running Poetry By Heart we’ve listened avidly to the stories and testament of many thousands of teachers, librarians and pupils who have taken part, in every school type and every corner of the country. Here are nine things we’ve learned. Achievement

When you learn a poem by heart, it becomes part of you; anytime, anywhere, you can breathe it into being again. Children tell us about ‘my’ poem; our judges praise how well they have ‘owned’ the poem. If the poems we offer for learning are diverse and inclusive, this ownership offers a powerful form of participation in cultural life. Togetherness Poetry By Heart is the poetry recitation competition for English schools. We are open to students in Key Stages 2-5 across a variety of competition categories including showcase (with the opportunity to enter self-written poetry or poems in other languages) and freestyle, where you can get really creative with different elements such as music, animation and more! There is also a special round for teachers and librarians to get involved. My Heart’s in the Highlands’was written in 1789 by Robert Burns. This song is sung to the tune of “Failte na Miosg”. Through this piece, Burns reveals how close he is to the Scottish highlands. He presents beautiful natural imagery and repetition to express her love for the place. His close attachment to the hills of highlands is captured in these lines: The Poetry By Heart resource for primary school children is designed to help pupils and teachers find poems they love, and enjoy them together through reading aloud and learning them by heart. It encourages playful discovery and serious fun.” Here are the poems selected:Poetry by Heart is a national poetry speaking competition for schools in England. It is open to young people in Key Stages 2-5. Pupils choose a poem, learn it by heart, and perform it. The organisers of the Poetry By Heart competition, aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds, has published a set of 65 poems to support the teaching of poetry to younger children. A Process in the Weather of the Heart’is a free-verse poem by Dylan Thomas. This poem taps on the theme of death. The dry and arid imagery of this piece makes a reader think of oblivion. After reading the text, it becomes clear that Thomas wrote this poem with a heavy heart, maybe lamenting his loved one’s death. In general, it is a topical poem about death that delves into the juncture when the heart gives up. Let’s have a look at the last few lines from the text:

The Poetry by Heart competition features a classic category where participants learn one pre-1914 and one post-1914 poem, and a freestyle category when they can choose any poem. A curated collection for them to choose from includes a wide range of poets, from Beowulf to contemporary poets such as Wayne Holloway-Smith, Roger Robinson and Romalyn Ante. Co-founder and director Julie Blakeof Poetry By Heart explains just why learning a poem by heart is so beneficial for children. A national poetry recital competition has launched a set of interactive resources for primary school children and their teachers. This poem, which sees Housman’s ‘Shropshire Lad’ observing the cherry blossom on the trees and reflecting, as a young lad of twenty, that he has only fifty years left of his biblical three-score and ten, is a case in point: Memorably recited in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral – the success of which led to a whole new generation discovering Auden’s poetry – this elegy actually started life as a parody of public obituaries, although its sentiment can be taken as sincere as well, which shows Auden’s genius. The four quatrains of this poem make it the ideal length to commit to memory.Love and the Gentle Heart’is a sonnet with an irregular rhyme scheme. This poem reveals the nature of love and heart. In the first two quatrains of this piece, Dante describes how love and heart are the same at the same time two distinct things. Whereas the concluding section talks about how virtue wins a woman’s heart and her love. Let’s have a look at the last few lines from Dante’s sonnet. Gyles Brandreth has, for many years, been familiar with the notion that learning something new every day is a sure-fire way of sustaining mental well-being. He's also got a hunch that if that new 'thing' is in verse form there are a raft of other positives to be had from the process of learning it heart. In this programme he garners advice on how it should best be done, what benefits it genuinely brings and what joys are to be had 'in vacant or in pensive mood' from the flow and facility of poetic verse recollected in tranquillity. Dr Julie Blake, FEA, FRSL(Hon), co-directs Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition for schools. She researches and writes about the history of poetry for children, creates digital and print anthologies of poems for children and young people, teaches poetry pedagogy and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry in the school English curriculum.

No one can learn a poem by heart for you. You have to create your own relationship with the poem, discover what memory tactics work best for you, and keep going when it seems too difficult. More managed curriculum activities don’t always have this scope and teachers are often delighted by the gains in learning independence. Language Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language. He famously observed of free verse, which was favoured by many modernist poets, that it was ‘like playing tennis with the net down’. Between 2013 and 2016 Poetry By Heart was the principal educational initiative of The Poetry Archive, developed with The Full English and supported by the Department for Education. It was co-founded by Andrew Motion (Co- Director of The Poetry Archive) and Dr Julie Blake (Co-Director of The Full English and Education Director of The Poetry Archive) in February 2012. Since 2016 Poetry by Heart has been directed by The Full English.

Teachers also tell us about younger children’s gains in reading fluency, vocabulary enrichment and the musicality of English. I prefer the description a teenager gave of the value to them of being able to articulate what they know they don’t yet have the words for and of trying out different adult voices to explore where they might fit. Memory In Poetry By Heart children choosing to learn a poem with others usually think they’re taking the easier option. In fact, speaking a poem with others demands cooperation, trust and coordination – and to do it well involves breathing together, being in the moment together and becoming part of something beyond yourself. Understanding Many of his poems are about the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his most famous and widely anthologised poems (‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Birches’, ‘Tree at My Window’). Elsewhere, he was fond of very short and pithy poetic statements: see ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘But Outer Space’, for example.

The grand final of the competion, which is now in its fourth year, will be held in March 2016 for students in secondary schools and colleges. Adults are regularly surprised by the facility children seem to have for learning by heart, with varied reasons proposed such as less fear, the pliability of young brains, and more time to devote to it. There’s a general consensus that once you’ve learned one thing it’s easier to learn more things, a poem being a very good place to begin. OracyIn the poem ‘The Hope of My Heart,’John McCrae describes the love that exists beyond the grave and a speaker’s worry for his little, fair maiden. The speaker describes how he was forced to leave her loved one behind. He cared for her deeply. When he is absent, he thinks she is unsafe in this world. Hence, he prays to God to protect her. He has to make sure when she dies comes to heaven. The poet’s love for the maiden is best expressed in these lines: Pupils who succeed in learning and performing a poem by heart, however short, feel an incredible sense of achievement. We think it’s to do with a tangible sense of mastery: the child either gets to the end of their poem or they don’t, and they can measure for themselves how well they’ve done it. This can be especially powerful for children with Special Educational Needs, low literacy levels and those who otherwise struggle to access the curriculum. Enjoyment Julie Blake, co-director of Poetry By Heart, said: “In the last couple of years many teachers have asked us if we could develop some resources for younger children and we are delighted to have done that now. The Poetry Society is part of a consortium of poetry organisations supporting the delivery of Poetry By Heart. In 2023, we are piloting an outreach programme, sending poets into schools in Hull, Luton, Rochdale and Walsall to support pupils in learning and performing a poem. About Poetry By Heart