Whitworth Community High School poetry flash mob stuns primary pupils

Bringing poetry to life from left Dominic Pratt, 12, and Bailey Antrobus, 12, act out I’m sick in front of Year 7s at Whitworth Community High School

Drama students created a stir when they became a flash mob and presented poetry during lessons at a primary school.

Although teaching staff at St Bartholomew’s C of E Primary School, Whitworth, were aware of the Whitworth Community High School students’ plans, the pupils were oblivious.

The Year 8 students spent three weeks in drama lessons perfecting their interpretation of several different poems.

They staged their performances for the school’s Year 7 students first and then, as part of National Poetry Day, they arrived at St Bartholomew’s already in costume.

For one student Bailey Antrobus 12, that not only meant wearing a dress but also full make up and pigtails.

He said: “I just went into the role I had to play and we knew it would be funnier being a boy playing a girl but I did get some strange looks off the young pupils when I walked into school.”

Students narrated the poems while others acted out scenes and delivered a few lines.

They also made stage sets and when Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky was performed they made sock puppets appear out of scenery.

Oliver Norris, 12, said: “It was great because we got a sense of accomplishment. A Y6 boy who came up to us afterwards and said, ‘that was incredible’.”