Northumberland Schools Library Service Conference 2025: The Power of Poetry, making it work in the primary classroom

Following on from our very successful inaugural conference in February this year – Focus on Non-fiction – planning is well underway for our second conference in which we will again team up with Literature Works.

Why poetry?
Very recent research from CLPE has highlighted challenges that teachers are facing when teaching poetry, including:
• Teacher knowledge and confidence
• Difficulties in seeing grammar and writing expectations
• Knowledge of and access to poets, poems and poetry texts
• Lack of training
• National or school curriculum being weighted to fiction & non-fiction.

Our conference plans to address all these issues. We are delighted to have secured award-winning poet Matt Goodfellow as one of our keynote speakers. Having met with Matt a couple of times now we are in no doubt that he will be an inspirational speaker who will enthuse all our delegates with his passion and originality.

We are also delighted to welcome back Dr Kirstin Mulholland & Lynne Carrick from Northumbria University, who will again speak about the most up to date evidence-based research. Once again, we are planning a ’round-robin’ ofpractical workshops so that  delegates are given the opportunity to immerse themselves in wonderful resources and can take away practical teaching
strategies and great ideas for lesson plans.

The conference will take place on Friday 7th February at County Hall, Morpeth and although we are offering a discounted price to SLS and/or Literature Works subscribers, everyone is welcome.

Bookings are open now at Eventbrite