Developing Children’s Critical Response to Poetry

This account of an action research project describes how children in two schools became inspired to read poetry by developing their abilities to make critical response by offering them greater freedom of choice and providing opportunities to share ideas with each other. The children who participated in the study were mixed groups of years 4, 5 and 6. As a classroom practitioner I have always enjoyed sharing poetry with children and encouraging children to read and enjoy poetry for pleasure. I know, from personal experience, how much children enjoy the varied experiences of poetry but my own observations and NLT research indicate that reading poetry for pleasure has been falling steadily, from 30% of readers choosing this genre in 2005 to just below 15% in 2012. (Clark 2012