‘Relationships’:
An overview of the resources in this cluster
All of the resources in this digital anthology have been written by Teachit contributors. The aim has been to create open, interesting activities which will help students at all levels to explore and engage with the texts and develop their own personal response.
There are a lot of activities here! The idea is that you ‘pick and mix’ from them, choosing those that you think will work well with particular groups of students and adapting them as you see fit. All the paper-based resources (as opposed to the whizzy ones) are provided as Word documents, so that you can add to them, cut bits out or tweak the instructions. Although wide-ranging, the resources aren’t meant to be comprehensive – we’re anticipating that in teaching these poems you’ll also use Wordbox and of course bring in ideas and activities of your own.
What’s in the mix?
A set of activities for each poem
Our contributors had a flexible brief and no o ne set of resources is the same. However, within each collection you’ll always find:
/ A link to the text in Wordbox / This takes you straight to an on-screen version of the text, which you can highlight, annotate and use to create your own interactive resources./ A copy of the poem / Actually two copies! – a PDF file identical to the printed anthology page that you can print from and a Word version that you can manipulate and use for resources of your own.
/ A reading / An audio recording of the poem, often read by the poet. You can download the MP3 file for students to save and/or to use in multimodal responses. This recording can also be played from within Wordbox.
/ Teaching ideas / Some quick-fire ideas for activities. These are the kind of suggestions teachers often pass on to each other – they don’t need a whole student resource to accompany them. They’re very practical and make great starting points.
/ A pre-reading activity / One or more activities to get students familiar with the poem’s language and/or themes before they encounter the whole text.
/ A collapsed text activity / Some of these are pre-reading activities too. ‘Collapsed text’ simply means a de-sequenced, de-contextualised version – so the words are placed in alphabetical order, or the lines are jumbled up.
/ A thematic or subject-based resource / Activities to help students get to grip with the poem’s central ideas.
/ Resources on language, form and structure / Two or more resources exploring how the poem is written and the effects of the writers’ choices.
/ A whizzy activity / At least one of the above activities will be interactive, for use on-screen with projectors and whiteboards.
/ A comparative activity / Approaches to comparing poems from this cluster, often including support for planning and writing.
/ Social and historical context / Biographical information about the poet and some contextual background to the poem.
In addition, you’ll find one or more of these activities:
/ A creative response activity / Students write their own poem or prose piece and in doing so engage with themes, language and techniques./ Drama/speaking and listening activities / Suggestions for drama, discussion, reading and role-play activities which get to the heart of the poem.
Each cluster also includes one or more videos:
/ An interview with a poet / Within the resources for ‘Brothers’ you’ll find an interview with Andrew Forster in which he discusses where the inspiration for his poetry comes from, his writing process and the influences on his work..Varied approaches
There is a wealth of approaches within each cluster. Each set is written by at least two different contributors, and sometimes three or four: the result is an eclectic and inventive mix. It’s impossible to highlight all the types of activity you’ll encounter, but here are a few, with examples.
Research tasks – use background information to ‘The Manhunt’ to write a ‘last hope’ letter, or explore the mythological and fairytale references in ‘Hour’.
Sorting activities – put words from Sonnet 116 into categories and use these to explore how love is presented.
Matching activities – match up pairs of quotations on-screen for ‘Ghazal’, or complete the metaphors for ‘The Manhunt’.
Personal/empathic responses – rank statements about relationships as a way in to ‘The Manhunt’ or write your own poem, using symbols and patterns, about a parent-child relationship for ‘Praise Song for My Mother’, or discuss the wishes you’d make for a new-born baby for ‘Born Yesterday’.
Creating a back story – read between the lines of ‘Sister Maude’.
Experimenting with form and structure – add line breaks, stanza breaks and punctuation to ‘The Manhunt’ or ‘Born Yesterday’, or explore and experiment with different versions of ‘Quickdraw’.
Exploring word choices – click on flippable Magnet tiles to explore alternative word choices for Sonnet 116 or ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
Comparison posters – become a master or mistress of comparison by creating posters for poems from ‘Relationships’, taking ‘Nettles’ as a starting point.
Text mapping – use the highlighter tool in Word to explore similarities and differences in ‘Sister Maude’ and Sonnet 43.
Active approaches – ‘saddle up’ and unleash your inner cowboy/girl with an exploration of form and structure in ‘Quickdraw.
Visual presentations – Animate the text of ‘Quickdraw’ in PowerPoint, or make a ‘Ghazal’ quilt, or make a short film exploring the relationship between father and son in ‘Harmonium’, or create a photo story to illustrate the relationship between the boys in ‘Brothers’.
Speaking and listening –students explore four central themes in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and try to persuade each other that theirs is the most important.
Games – students test each other on ‘Hour’, competing to fill their hourglass before their opponent does, or play a memory game to learn about the ghazal’s form, themes and origins.
Transforming texts – create a tanka from ‘Hour’, rewrite Sonnet 43 as a series of ‘tweets’, or turn ‘To His Coy Mistress’ into a two-part rap.
Devised scenes and freeze frames – run a hot seating activity in which a death is being investigated by the police for ‘Sister Maude’, or create wedding photograph freeze frames for ‘The Farmer’s Bride’
Comparison grids – consider the key similarities and differences between ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and ‘In Paris With you’ and rate these according to their importance, or work through some key questions on ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and ‘Sister Maude’ with the help of a framework.
Adaptability
We’ve included teaching notes with suggestions for differentiation, and several resources come with different versions for Higher Tier and Foundation Tier students. Most of the resources lend themselves to adaptation and can easily be tweaked to build in more support or add challenge.
Although all the activities have been created with a specific poem or poems in mind, many of them will work just as well with another poem, so you really can mix and match – and that could include taking activities from other clusters.
Approaches to assessment
The digital anthology resources were created primarily with the English Literature exam option in mind. If you’re doing this option, you might like to use some of the resources from other clusters as preparation for the unseen poem (Section B).
If you’re teaching poetry for any of the Controlled Assessment Unit 3 options, the resources here should provide a strong starting point for exploring some or all of your chosen texts. You can of course not only pick those resources best suited to the tasks your students are doing, but adapt others to fit the theme or other aspect that they’re focusing on.
Finally, several of the activities in this cluster and others provide opportunities for speaking and listening assessment. To see them, simply type ‘speaking’ or ‘drama’ into the search engine.
Any questions?
We hope you enjoy using these activities. If you have any questions, comments or feedback on the resources, please get in touch – email or call us on 01225 788850.
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