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92 Help your students sharpen their critical skills by pairing poems with popular music that covers similar thematic ground, suggests Emily Bearman…. WHAT’S THIS POEM HIDING? Lesson plan: ENGLISH KS3 Following the introduction of the new GCSE specification, and its significantly larger focus on both seen and unseen poetry, we at Maltings Academy have sought to prioritise building and challenging students’ passion and love for learning poetry at KS3. Our approach has been to utilise the medium of music and role models, in the form of rap, hip hop and spoken word artists, to help students explore these shared conventions and express themselves, while building their confidence and ability to inspire their peers. teachwire.net/secondary DOWNLOAD an ‘emotion wheel’ to support this activity’s vocabulary requirements for FREE via teachwire.net/ musicpoetry MAIN ACTIVITIES WHYTEACHTHIS? Are you struggling to engage your students in finding the ‘tone’ of a poem? By comparing poets to songwriters, and making connections between poetry and rap music, it’s possible to develop students’ creativity, oracy, confidence and ability to express themselves. KEYCURRICULUM LINKS • Identify and compare key poetic conventions used in a variety of texts. • Explore narratives from different genres, considering the contextual factors of each piece. • Strengthen students’ cultural capital, enabling them to access a broader range of creative stimuli. STARTER ACTIVITY I’ll start with an open-ended question on the board, assigning students two images that relate to the poem and/or piece of music we’ll be looking at. The students are then encouraged to make connections between each of the images and present these via mini-whiteboards or Post-it notes that can be stuck on the board and shared. How can you get from each image in five words? Students will sometimes make the same connections, indicating shared ideas– more able students can be challenged to identify common themes or emotions linked to both images. Can poetry and music 'Spark a mind that will change the world'? Q There are a range of activities that can be used with this concept for the lesson, depending on ability, which can be covered over a few hours. 1 PREDICTIONS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS Students are provided with the titles of a poem and a song and encouraged to share their initial reactions within a set time limit. Ask them to note down their predictions of what the content of the song and poem will consist of, either independently or in pairs, depending on the preferred level of challenge. The resulting lists are then shared as a class. Have the students stand and use a ‘round robin’