Over the past few months we have been focusing a bit more on poetry (it is one of those areas that I feel we have neglected a bit). We have been working through a workbook, trying to read and discuss more poems and we also tried this Sunflower Poetry unit that I found on the Twinkl website (it is part of their Secondary set of work and I would say it is well suited for kids in lower KS3).

The Sunflower poetry unit is set out as 6 different lessons and I must admit we followed the unit exactly as it is set out. I did all the lessons with my oldest and did them in the same order as suggested. I don’t always do that with the units on Twinkl but with this unit, I liked every lesson and the order of the lessons, it just seemed like a really nice, complete unit and with only 6 lessons it was not too long.

The lessons are as follows

• similes and adjectives
• reading out loud
• instructions
• personification
• writing poetry
• proofreading and editing

Each lesson has a PowerPoint presentation which is essentially the lesson – it is what explains a bit about the concept (i.e. what is a simile and how can you extend it). And each lesson also has at least 1 activity sheet (we liked all of the suggested activities in this unit but we did also search for a few extras activities on Twinkl for similes and personification – this is actually one of the reasons why I like using the site, you can always find other activities to add in if you want too). They also included a really nice booklet containing 4 examples of sunflower poetry.

I thought the lessons highlighted some important aspects of writing poetry and then without dragging on too long in lesson 5 the kids start trying to write their own poem. My youngest actually just joined us for part of the 4th and 5th lesson and then had a go at creating his own poem (this is his first draft).

After completing the unit my daughter actually commented that writing poetry is not as intimidating as she had thought and I must admit the final poem that she came up with really did impress me (she chose not to share her poem).

I was really happy with this Sunflower Poetry unit. It just ticked all the right boxes for us. It covered the right poetry concepts, it got the kids writing poems and it was really easy for me to facilitate. My only complaint is I wish there was another unit like this.