Po-vember
Because learning poetry by heart is a good thing
Each summer I do a reading challenge for the kids, which involves them having to read books1 in certain categories, in order to navigate their way across a map, opening ‘secret’ envelopes as they pass key milestones.
This November - or ‘Po-vember’, to coin a phrase2 - I’ve decided to do something a little different. I’ve set each of the children a list of ten poems, of which they have to memorise3 up to five:
1 for Bronze
2 for Silver
3 for Gold
5 for Platinum
By giving ten poems and requiring a maximum of five to be learned, it gives the children some choice to choose the ones they like. Also, if they should happen to try to optimise it, by choosing the ones they think will be easiest4, then they’ll probably end up reading all ten a few times trying to choose the easiest - a bonus!5
I’ve chosen poems aligned to both my own children’s, and my own, tastes: a mixture of some favourites they like already, and others I like and would like them to know. I’ve also tried to tailor it so that those with simpler vocabulary and structure tend to be a bit longer, whereas those with more advanced vocabulary and concepts are shorter.
I’m sharing here the versions I’ve made for my own children, Eldest (10) and Youngest (6) - but if anyone wants an original Word file6, so you can tweak and adapt as you wish, please contact me7 and I will send it to you.
Surprisingly enough.
Yes, I did think of this in summer, but delayed so that I could call it ‘Po-vember’. And also to put a decent break between the two challenges.
They can memorise them one at a time - they don’t have to memorise all at once.
Which Eldest in particular may well do.
The best exercise is one where attempting to game it ends up with the person gaming actually doing what you want them to do.
Slightly annoyingly, Substack will only allow me to embed PDFs.