Black History Month 2025 – Poetry Workshops

A day starts with an opening assembly exploring the extraordinary achievements of Mary Seacole. This is followed by a series of workshops, for a year group at a time (apart from EYFS, where we prefer to work with each class separately). These use immersive techniques (including games and drama-based approaches) to introduce children to their selected individual – all linked to a science strand that the children will be exploring at some point over 2025/26 – and culminate in collaborative poems. The individuals are …

EYFS: Dr Frederick Akbar Mohamed … one of the UK’d first non-white consultants, a man whose work on blood pressure is still saving lives today!

Year 1: Lyda Newman … a Black American woman who used her understanding of materials to invent the first modern hairbrush!.

Year 2: Jagadish Chandra Bose … Indian scientist who made important discoveries about ways in which plants respond to their environments.

Year 3: Sarah Goode … a Black American woman who overcame all the odds to both open her own furniture store and use the science of forces to invest the first reliable fold-up bed.

Year 4: Ibn al Haytham … a scholar from the Golden Age of Islam who was the first to understand the properties of light – and who created the first pinhole camera outside China.

Year 5: Katherine Johnson … a brilliant mathematician who worked in the shadows to endure that Neil Armstrong got to the moon (and that the ill-fated Apollo 13 astronauts made it back to Earth).

Year 6: John Edmonstone … a man who, born into slavery, went on to find fame and influence in Scotland – and who set Charles Dickens on the road to formulating his theory of evolution.

Each school booking a day of workshops  will receive our beautifully designed Fact Files on each of the seven individuals – and illustrated versions of all the collaborative poems.