Years 3 and 4 English · Key Stage 2 · Reading – comprehension

Years 3 and 4 poems and plays: reading aloud and performing

In Years 3 and 4 children prepare poems and play scripts to read aloud and perform, using their voices and actions to show they understand the words. They talk about words and phrases that spark their imagination, and they meet different forms of poetry. Performing is not an extra: deciding how to say a line is one of the best ways to show, and to build, understanding.

Performing poems and plays, explained

Reading a poem or a script aloud well is a skill that rests on understanding. To decide whether a line should be whispered or shouted, quick or slow, a child has to work out what is going on and how the character or speaker feels. The curriculum names four tools for showing this: intonation (the rise and fall of the voice), tone (the feeling it carries), volume and action. Good performers use all four, and know that a pause or a very quiet line can be more powerful than a loud one.

Play scripts have their own layout. Each character’s name is written at the start of their line, usually without inverted commas, and instructions for actors, called stage directions, are put in brackets or italics. Stage directions are not read aloud. Children learn to find their own part, read the directions and think about what the character wants. Many teachers use drama approaches, such as freeze-frames (holding a scene still like a photograph) or hot-seating (questioning someone who stays in role as a character), to help children grasp what is happening.

Children also discuss words and phrases that capture the reader’s interest and imagination. Powerful words aren’t necessarily long or rare. In a line such as “the storm crept in”, crept gives the storm the movement of an animal, which makes the reader picture it. Rehearsing a poem is a natural time to talk about vocabulary and where words come from, because every word has to be said with care.

At this stage children recognise some different forms of poetry. Schools choose which ones to teach, and the curriculum gives free verse and narrative poetry as examples. Free verse has no regular rhyme scheme or fixed beat, and relies on the natural rhythm of speech, line breaks and images. A narrative poem tells a story, often with characters and events in order. Many classes also meet rhyming poems, shape poems or short forms such as haiku. The particular forms are a school’s choice: what the curriculum requires is that children can recognise some different forms.

Words your child will hear

Intonation: How your voice rises and falls as you speak, for example going up at the end of a question.
Tone: The feeling in your voice: gentle, angry, excited, mysterious.
Stage directions: Instructions in a play script about what to do or how to speak. They aren’t read aloud.
Script: The written text of a play, with characters’ names and their words.
Free verse: Poetry with no regular rhyme scheme or fixed beat.
Narrative poem: A poem that tells a story.
Rehearse: Practise something before performing it.

What the National Curriculum says

In Years 3 and 4, pupils should be taught to:

Develop positive attitudes to reading by preparing poems and play scripts to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action
Develop understanding of what they read by discussing words and phrases that capture the reader’s interest and imagination
Develop understanding of what they read by recognising some different forms of poetry

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: preparing a short poem to perform

Plan how to read these four lines aloud: The storm crept in on silent feet, then crashed against the door. It rattled every window pane and howled across the floor.

Read the poem silently and ask what is happening. A storm arrives quietly and then suddenly makes a lot of noise. The poem has two parts: the quiet arrival and the loud attack.
Pick out powerful words and phrases. “Crept in on silent feet” makes the storm sound like an animal. Crashed, rattled and howled are all noisy verbs that you can almost hear. Talk about the picture each one makes.

Plan the voice for each line, using volume, speed and tone.

Line 1: slow, quiet, hushed
Line 2: pause, then CRASHED loud
Line 3: fast, rattling, sharp
Line 4: long, rising howl

Add small actions to match, such as creeping fingers for the first line and a sudden hand movement on crashed. Keep them small, so the voice does the main work.
Try the performance, listen, and decide what to change. Did the pause before crashed work? Would the howl be better if it were longer? Rehearsing and improving is the point.

A performance plan like the one above: quiet and slow to begin, a pause before “crashed”, quick for “rattled” and a long, rising “howled”, with a few small actions.

Common mistakes and how to help

Thinking that performing means reading as loudly or as fast as possible

Children confuse volume with expression, or race through to get it over with, especially when nervous.

What helps: Try the same line three ways: quiet, slow, then loud. Ask which one fits and why. Show that a pause before an important word can be dramatic.

Believing a poem has to rhyme

Nursery rhymes and many favourite poems rhyme, so children expect every poem to follow suit.

What helps: Read a poem that doesn’t rhyme, such as a free verse poem, and talk about what makes it a poem: line breaks, rhythm, vivid pictures. Rhyme is a choice, not a rule.

Reading the stage directions or the character names out loud

A script looks like a story on a page, so children read everything in order, including the labels and the directions.

What helps: Highlight your own part and put a box round the stage directions. Explain that the directions tell the actor what to do and that the name tells who is speaking.

Assuming powerful words must be long or difficult

Children are often praised for using ambitious vocabulary, so they hunt for the longest word rather than the best one.

What helps: Ask “What picture does this word give you?” Short words such as crept, crashed and howled can be the most powerful of all.

How to help at home

One line, three ways. Pick one line, such as “I didn’t want to go”, and say it in different ways: sad, cross, excited. Your child can guess the feeling. It shows how tone changes meaning.
A poem to perform. Choose a short poem from a library book and learn it together, then perform it for another grown-up, a relative or an audience of toys. Decide together where to be quiet, where to be loud and where to pause.
Family script. Share the parts in a play script from the library, or write a short scene about something that happened at home. Talk about which words are spoken and which are directions that are not read out.
Collect words that make pictures. Keep a jar or a list of words and phrases from poems and stories that your child found vivid. Chat about why each one works and try to use one in conversation.
Say it, don’t just read it. Ask your child to read a page or two of the bedtime story aloud to you. Gently encourage them to think about how the characters would sound, rather than reading in one flat voice.

Builds on

Year 2: Stories, poems and non-fiction
Year 2: Favourite words and poems by heart
Year 2: Understanding what we read
Year 2: Discussing books and poems

Leads on to

Years 5 and 6: Reading widely and recommending books
Years 5 and 6: Themes, comparisons and poetry
Years 5 and 6: Inference, prediction and summarising
Years 5 and 6: Figurative language, fact and opinion
Years 5 and 6: Discussing and debating books