Your child will study a range of poetry and plays throughout primary school. As well as helping your child with any homework, you'll also want to foster a love of these literacy styles. In this section of the site, you'll find information on how poetry and plays are taught in school as well as poetry and playwriting worksheets that help your child develop the key skills needed to interpret these texts.
Get your child excited about poems
You'll find targeted primary school poetry resources to help your child develop key poetry writing skills, such as using figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia etc), improving writing with adjectives and using powerful verbs and WOW words. Explore teacher-created poetry worksheets to encourage your child to write poems in a variety of styles, such as list poems, haiku poems, acrostic and cinquains, and improve your child's poetry composition and analysis skills and develop poetic language. We also recommend classic poems to read with primary-school children, great poetry anthologies for kids and poetry apps.
Dive into plays
Reading, writing and performing play scripts are included in the National Curriculum literacy objectives for primary school. We explain what a play script is and how to encourage your young actor and our downloadable worksheets help your child to set out a play script correctly, analyse play scripts, write in rhyming couplets, read and perform play scripts.
Who knows, you might even discover you have a budding poet or playwright under your own roof!
Articles
What is rhyme?
From reading rhyming poems to identifying rhyme schemes and rhyming couplets, we explain everything you need to know to help you support your child's love and learning of poetry at home.
11 easy tips to make Shakespeare fun for kids
You don't have to be a theatre buff or a classic-literature lover to appreciate Shakespeare's wonderful stories, compelling characters and beautiful language. We say it's never too early to introduce children to the Bard, so here are 11 great ways to help under-12s fall in love with his verses.
Best poetry home education resources
Do you love poetry, or wish you had more time to explore it? Introduce your family to the delights of the spoken word with this selection of wonderful free poetry resources. Classic poems for children, performance poetry videos, interactive poetry games and kids' poetry podcasts: everything you need to encourage a love of verse is available at the click of a button.
Worksheets
First rhymes: writing poetry
Continue this sporty poem with some rhymes of your own.
Creating images in poetry
A simile is when something is compared to something else, using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. This poem is about acorns. It contains two similes; can you find them?
Analysing a play script
Read this play script about a boy who finds himself on a magical island and is tempted to eat some very special fruit, then act it out with a family member. Can you find the following features in the play script?
Also see:
Inspire a love of poetry in your child
Coax out the budding poet in your child with great worksheets, activities and games:
To be or not to be...
Could your child be the next Tom Stoppard? There is lots you can do at home to encourage your child's enjoyment of the theatre. As well as taking them to see as many plays as possible, why not try the following:
Plus, visit the Homework Gnome and find out all about one of our greatest playwrights – William Shakespeare.
