Collaborative curiosity-driven writing workshops and performances led by professional poets.
About the show
In Poetry Jam Jar, poets deliver participatory school workshops that take a collaborative, curiosity-driven and sensory approach to creative writing. Each class generates ideas and lines of poetry in their writing workshops, which are placed in the Poetry Jam Jar.
Afterwards, all the classes come together and the poets select ideas from the jam jar, guiding pupils to join their ideas into a single collaborative poem. The poets lead the pupils to recite the poem chorally. Finally, the poets finish the day by performing their own work, with time for pupils to ask questions.
Key Stage / Year Groups:
- KS1, KS2 and SEND
SEND Show Adapations:
- Flexible performance length, quieter versions.
Relevant areas of the National Curriculum:
- Literacy & English
- Oracy
- Resillence
- Wellbeing
About the pupil workshops
For the workshop, a poet will visit each class, equipped with a jam jar. At first, the jar is a source of creative inspiration: it is filled with questions that spark your class’s curiosity, short inspirational poems – including poems by young writers – and prompts that encourage them to take notice of the world around them using different senses. Your pupils will learn how to respond to the prompts using imagery and descriptive language, beginning to form ideas for a poem. The jar is then filled with their responses, creating a repository of ingredients for a poem.
Workshop SEND adaptations:
- Flexible length of workshop, activities are adaptable to different levels of reading and writing ability.
Teacher twilight CPD
The CPD session is led by experienced poet facilitators. The session will demonstrate how teachers can use creative writing as a tool for encouraging collaboration and wellbeing, and boost teachers’ confidence in bringing poetry into the classroom. The CPD will outline how the offer relates to the curriculum and to wellbeing and will introduce teachers to the methods and resources the poets will use.
This CPD can accommodate up to 2 to 20 members of staff.
About The Poetry Society
The Poetry Society is the UK’s leading poetry organisation. For over 100 years we’ve been a lively and passionate source of energy and ideas, opening up and promoting poetry to an ever-growing community of people. Our education work creates talent development opportunities for poets, teachers, pupils, and emerging writers.
