FREE teacher’s pack

For your free set of anthologies, posters and a lesson plan to inspire your class to write their poems, email us with your school address ([email protected]). We’re working from home at the moment but will do our best to send the anthologies to you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, online versions are freely available here and you can download a copy of the poster here. To enter your students into the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, follow our school entry process online or send us the poems, accompanied by a class entry form, in the post to: FYP2021, The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London, WC2H 9BX. Every school that enters 25 or more students’ poems will get a £50 discount on our Poets in Schools Service.

Teaching resources and tips

Need some fresh ideas to galvanize your students’ writing? Here are some resources to get you started. More will be added throughout the competition so keep checking back for updates!

NEW! A new video by Teacher Trailblazer Gareth Ellis explores how to use of the poems in the Foyle Young Poets anthology to practise the unseen for GCSE. Watch it here.
Our ‘Learning from Home‘ page has some fantastic exercises and prompts designed to get your students writing.
We’ve gathered together lots of reading recommendations for poetry suitable for young people.
Our Teacher Trailblazers have got some top tips for teaching poetry. You can also find lots of lesson plans by our Teacher Trailblazers further down this page.
Look at the past Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award anthologies.
The judges of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, Maura Dooley and Keith Jarrett, and Foyle Award patron Matt Abbott, sat down to discuss ‘what makes a good poem’.

Here are some lesson plans created by our teacher trailblazers using winning poems from past Foyle Awards. More will be added in the coming months.

Gareth Ellis’s lesson plan ‘Where talk is never cheap‘ looks at Libby Russell’s ‘Love Poem to Young Offenders Support Workers’, a winner in the 2020 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
Amy Davis’s lesson plan ‘Love Yourself‘ explores ‘Love Poem to Myself’ by Cia Mangat, a winner in the 2019 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
Gagandeep Chaggar’s lesson plan ‘The Power of Memory and Association‘ looks at ‘God in 80s Movies’ by Em Power, a winner in the 2018 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
Lyndsay Chand’s lesson plan ‘Creating Voices’ looks at ‘unwritten letter from my great-grandmother to my great-grandfather, 1930’ by Enshia Li, a winner in the 2017 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
Fran Pridham’s lesson plan explores ‘Celebrations’ inspired by Lucy Thynne’s 2017 winning poem ‘the parents anniversary’.
Joanne Bowles’s lesson plan ponders ‘Does this smell like a good poem?’ inspired by Cyrus Larcombe-Moore’s 2016 winning poem.
Kate Brackley’s lesson plan explores relationships through ‘Making poetry with my mother‘ inspired by Letitia Chan’s 2016 winning poem.
Write unusual list poem and find our new ways of looking at nouns in this lesson plan
Ben Bransfield takes you through ‘How to bake a poet‘ in this lesson plan inspired by Sophia Carney’s 2015 winning poem.
Try writing Poetry as a call to arms. A lesson plan based on Phoebe Stucke’s 2013 winning poem Daughters.
Write Poems inspired by works of art. A lesson plan based on a 2013 winning poem ‘An Interior Scene’.

For more lesson plans, visit our Poetryclass site or look at our Vimeo playlist of tips from teachers.