Free resource for teachers

The Poem of the Week routine

One poem, five days, a whole class performing by Friday

Fluency that builds, not drills

A lot of fluency time is spent on cold, stopwatch-flavoured reading. The Poem of the Week is the opposite: one poem, learned properly across a week, until the class can perform it.

On day one you read it to them in full. By day five they are doing the reading, and you have backed away. Repetition children actually enjoy, because it ends in a performance they are proud of.

Children cannot read with expression they have never heard.

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The Poem of the Week routine.
Print it. Follow it. Use it Monday.

How the week runs

1Day one — hear it — You read the poem in full. The children follow along. They hear how it should sound before they try to make it sound that way.

2Day two — say it together — Echo reading, then choral reading. The class joins you line by line until the poem is on everybody's tongue.

3Day three — feel it — Slow the pace down. Talk about the phrasing and the shape of the poem. What is it saying, and how does the rhythm carry it?

4Day four — rehearse it — Children mark their own copy and practise. Some will perform alone, some in pairs, some in a group. It is their choice.

5Day five — perform it — The class performs the poem to itself first, then to another class, or to the grown-ups. That is the point of the week.

The programme in miniature

A Chestnut-stage performance poem

This is the kind of poem the routine is built around. Chestnut is the middle stage, sized for Year 3, and this is one of 140 banded poems in Dawn Chorus, our poetry engine from Year 1 to Year 4.

Washing the Dog · a poem for two washers, a dog and a class chorus

CHILD 1: Right. Let's give the dog a bath.

CHILD 2: Right. Let's give the dog a bath.

DOG: Grrr.

CHORUS: Scrub-a-dub, scrub-a-dub, in goes the dog!
Off with the mud, off with the grime, off with the bog!

CHILD 2: Look at this ear! There's a frog in its fluff.

CHILD 1: Look at this tail! There's a… wait, what IS that?

CHORUS: Scrub-a-dub, scrub-a-dub, in goes the dog!
Off with the mud, off with the grime, off with the bog!

The whole poem ends with a very clean, very smug dog heading straight back outside. The routine above shows you how to take it from a first read to a Friday performance. It's your free download for the price of an email.

Why poems?

Poems are made to be spoken. The rhythm and rhyme carry children into reading with phrasing and expression, without a worksheet in sight. A poem gives a class something real to rehearse and perform together.

Short and regular beats long and rare. One poem a week is a reliable way to build fluency for every child, whatever their starting point.

Where it comes from

I'm Simon Sharp, a headteacher. The Poem of the Week is how we teach reading fluency where I work: a poem each week, modelled in full, rehearsed across the week and performed on Friday.

It started because children who could decode were still reading slowly and flatly. They had the words but not the music. Poetry gives the music back.

— Simon Sharp, Headteacher