With national poetry day coming up next week (02.10.25), Year 5 have been reading The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt. To summarise, this poem reveals a cunning spider’s evil plan to lure the fly into his trap by using flattering words. The fly at first is very wary of the spider, but, in time, the spider’s kind words are too enticing for the fly to ignore. The fly enters the spider’s trap and does not meet a happy end.
When reading aloud, the children have blown me away with their fantastic oracy skills, such as tonal variation and voice projection when pretending to be the spider and the fly. In our most recent retrieval lesson, children were tasked with drawing the spider’s parlour based on facts in the text. The accuracy of their illustrations and annotations was brilliant and the children managed to include everything!
Here are some brilliant examples:
Help at home:
Practise reading aloud with your child and focus on different ways to use voices. With national poetry day just around the corner, perhaps use a poem to read together?