Poetry Week

Our annual Poetry Week saw staff and children celebrating poetry and enjoying all sorts of poetry-related activities.

On National Poetry Day (Thursday 4 October), we welcomed poet and performer, Michelle Madsen who ran workshops and entertained the children with her wonderfully imaginative ideas. Michelle spoke about how she writes poems about things that she finds surprising or sad or funny. She invited the children to think about the poems they love. In the Pre-Prep, the children talked about animal poems, rhymes and poems about places. Very cleverly, Michelle worked the children's ideas into lines of poetry - favourite animals became beautiful colours.

Children in Transition created a whole group poem based on a magic unicorn. Michelle’s gentle and persuasive style informed the workshops and the children produced some wonderful writing.

The week culminated in the final of the House Poetry Recitation Competition. Mr Tom Eyre-Maunsell, Head of English at Rugby School, was on hand to judge the excellent performances by children from Pre-Prep to Form VI. He gave lots of helpful advice and praised everyone for their efforts. Well done to all this year’s finalists and the winners!

There was also a surprise performance by the Headmaster who completed the first task of his challenge to do '50 Things that make Ashfold Ashfold' in his first year as Head.