Poetry for Lower Key Stage 2

You can find all of Hamilton's poetry blocks for Year 3 and Year 4 by using the poetry filter at the top of the page and exploring Autumn, Spring and Summer blocks. We have also picked out a few of our favourite poetry blocks below for you to try.

Humorous Poems: School Poems
Enjoy reading and writing humorous poems about teachers and school life. Study the use of powerful verbs, adverbs and prepositions to create impact.

Laugh your way through English with the humorous poems in this block including:

• 'At the End of School Assembly' by Simon Pitt
• 'Ghoul School Rules' by Sue Cowling
• 'We Lost our Teacher' to the Sea by David Harmer
• 'A Sea Creature Ate our Teacher' by Brian Moses

Explore Humorous Poems for Year 3.

Poetic Forms: Performance Poems
Listen to performance poems and explore their features. Use conjunctions indicating time and cause. Investigate negative prefixes, informal language and rhymes. Write a rap.

Perfect your performance techniques with poems in this block such as:

• 'The Torch' by Michael Rosen
• 'You Tell Me' by Michael Rosen
• 'Dear Mum' by Brian Patten
• 'No Word of a Lie' by Jackie Kay

Explore Performance Poems for Year 3.

Poems on a Theme: Animal Poems
Use animal poems to stimulate discussion and analysis. Study description, expanded noun phrases and adverbs and use them to write poems about endangered animals.

Here are just a few of the poems looked at in this block:

• 'Black Ca't by Suzanne Elvidge
• 'The Fox's Foray', Anonymous
• 'The Sloth' by Colin West
• 'Rabbit Poem' by Pamela Mordecai

Explore Animal Poems for Year 3.

Poetic Forms: Syllabic Poems
Use Studio Ghibli films and contemporary Japanese popular culture, including Pokémon, to frame the study of haikus and syllabic poems. Use descriptive language and adverbials.

Study haiku by various authors, including Takahama Kyoshi, Sugita Hisajo and Hashimoto Takako.

Explore Syllabic Poems for Year 4.

Narrative Poetry: Explore Narrative Poetry
Explore a variety of narrative poetry. Use noun phrases, fronted adverbials and pronouns. Identify features of language used by poets. Learn, recite and write poems that tell a story.

Narrative poems in this block include:

• 'You Wait Till I’m Older Than You' by Michael Rosen
• 'Maggie and the Dinosaur' by Dave Ward
• 'The Child Who Was Wild' by Michael Rosen
• 'Overheard on a Saltmarsh' by Harold Monro

Explore Narrative Poetry for Year 4.

Poetic Forms: Odes and Insults
Using odes, explore powerful types of imagery, such as simile, metaphor and hyperbole. Learn about pronouns and determiners. Examine extracts of Shelley's 'To a Skylark'.

Here are just a few of the poems looked at in this block:

• 'Ode to an Olive', Anonymous
• 'Ode to Marbles' by Max Mendelsohn
• 'The Making of the Gingerbread Man' by Rachel Rooney
• 'Vocabulary for Villains' by Eric Finney

Explore Odes and Insults for Year 4.

Hamilton provides a diverse range of planning around multiple texts to give teachers a wide choice for their English teaching. With Oftsed's focus on making sure your planning is representative and relevant to the children in your class, we want to make sure you have plenty of choice - with poems that have diverse characters, settings and cultural backgrounds that can be matched to your class, whatever your particular context looks like.

Explore more poetic inspiration for key stage one or for upper key stage two.