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Children join poetry class world record attempt

BBC Three pupils are wearing Roundhill Academy school uniform. BBC
From left: Jaiveer, Arya and Nahal took part in the worldwide poetry lesson

Children from a Leicestershire secondary school joined 273,000 others worldwide for what they hope will be the world's biggest poetry class.

Year seven at Roundhill Academy in Syston collaborated with schools across the world to create one poem on Thursday, which was National Poetry Day.

Ru Dalal, literacy lead at the school, said poetry is important as it helps students to be able to express themselves and improves their mental wellbeing.

An official from Guinness World Records outlined the rules for the biggest poetry lesson and promised to give a result once all the schools send in their video evidence.

Children from Roundhill Academy sit in their school hall looking up at a projection of the words in the poem they are creating.
Children at Roundhill Academy in Syston helped create a poem during the Guinness World Record attempt

Laura Mucha, a poet and teacher from Cambridge University, came up with the idea and led the class.

All who took part were given a theme of "counting" and were asked to create some lines which were sent to the organiser of the class before it took place.

During the class, the children could vote on which lines they wanted to be included in the final poem. There was much excitement as they recognised their lines in the poem.

Ru Dalal, literacy lead at Roundhill Academy, standing in front of a projector screen and children looking up at it
Ru Dalal says the world record attempt was "incredible"

Ms Dalal told BBC News: "It's important for the students to be able to express themselves and it's really great for their wellbeing.

"There was supposed to be 80,000 [pupils] but 273,000 actually took part in the end, which is just incredible."

Nahal, 11, said "it was very chaotic", but described the experience as "really fun".

Her classmate Arya, 11, added: "I love poetry and I like to write poetry because it makes my brain active."

Jaiveer, also aged 11, said he loves acrostic poems, where the first letter in each line spells a word or phrase.

"I can write an acrostic poem using any random word. Sometimes it doesn't rhyme but it's really fun to do," he added.

An official from Guinness World Records was beamed on the screen.

The record will be measured by the number of people taking part, at the same time, in all locations.

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