It’s the time of year when our whole school becomes passionate about poetry.

Traditionally, schools in Scotland celebrate Burns Night (the birthday of the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns) by holding poetry recitals and competitions. Scotland is a long way from our school on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, but a Scottish teacher was determined we should share in one of her country’s favourite cultural events. So now, for the sixth year running, we have held a Burns Night competition, where each class competes to produce a poetry performer par excellence.

Students in every class from Year Two to Year Nine chose a poem to learn and perform for their classmates. The winners were chosen by a mixture of class vote and teacher judgement. Then we all got together in our auditorium to watch the class champions battle it out.Poetry is a great learning tool. All age groups respond to the power of words, and memorising verse is a good workout for the grey matter.As well as learning poems, many classes also wrote their own. The majority of our students don’t have English as their first language, but they were still able to produce some powerful work.Watching them on the stage, we were impressed at the pride they took in their performances, and the enjoyment they gained from sharing some superb poetry.