Petts Hill Primary School Pupils Perform at The National CLiPPA Poetry Awards at The National Theatre

This summer, Petts Hill Primary School participated in the CLPE’s (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) Schools Shadowing Scheme which is designed to promote the teaching of poetry in schools. This runs alongside CLiPPA – their prestigious poetry award and the only UK award for children’s poetry writers.

Our year 6 children used the resources written by CLPE to follow the scheme, focusing on the poet Kwame Alexander's book Rebound. This is a novel written in poetry telling the story of Charlie who is mourning the death of his father but discovers basketball and grows into a legend on the courts. The children responded to his poetry by performing his poems, filming their work and sending it to CLPE.

We were one of five winning shadowing schools from across the country and as such this meant that one of our year 6 groups was chosen to perform their piece at The National Theatre.

On Wednesday 3rd July, Neeyan, Gabriel and Szymon gave a superbly confident performance to a 900 strong audience, including our year 6 class, in the National Theatre of which we are extremely proud. They did this alongside famous children’s poets and the other four winning schools.

Steven Camden (Everything All At Once published by Macmillan) was then announced as the winner of the 17th CLiPPA Award Ceremony. Writer, illustrator and cartoonist Chris Riddell was also in attendance illustrating the ceremony and performances. His drawings of Petts Hill’s contributions have been sent to the school and will be proudly displayed as a lasting memory of this occasion.