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93 teachwire.net/secondary THE AUTHOR Emily Bearman is second in English at Maltings Academy in Witham, Essex GOING DEEPER • Designate more able students as ‘lead learners’ and provide opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, focused on supporting other students with vocabulary. Challenging words contained in the texts can be starred around the classroom and presented as a challenge to certain students in the form of a treasure hunt. • Have the students apply the same analysis and exploration techniques to more challenging examples of 19th and 20th century poetry. Consider the different historical contexts that might apply to poems from different time periods. process to identify any predictions offered by multiple students and have those students sit down. The students left standing should have the more implicit ideas – those that the least number of students will have predicted. 2 MEDIAVERSIONS The students then listen to recordings – or ideally watch performances/videos – of both pieces, identifying and comparing key meanings behind each. Give your students a checklist of features to examine. What words change as each piece unfolds? What images are created in the language? What do you think the speaker is feeling at key points? Are certain phrases repeated throughout, and if so, why? The aim of this task is for students to use their listening skills to detect and identify key pointers, while also watching out for facial expressions, creative prompts and any other visual effects that lend themselves to the overall tone of each piece. Afterwards, discuss what’s meant by a work having ‘multiple interpretations’ and ‘different perspectives’; encourage the students to see how certain words and images can create different meanings, and how those meanings can evolve or shift within different contexts. 3 TALKTRIANGLES Now get the students to share their ideas and interpretations within a ‘talk triangle’. Have the students form groups of three and assume the following roles: ‘scribe’; ‘talker 1’ and ‘talker 2’. For round one, set a timer for 60 seconds, in which talker 1 has to recall as much evidence from the previous task as they can to the other two members. Reset the timer and do the same again for round two, this time with talker 2 doing the recalling. In round three, the scribe has to recall and note down what both talkers said during the previous rounds, ideally on a mini whiteboard. This activity can give you a differentiation strategy when it comes allocating the roles and allow students to practice working together within a set amount of time, as well as a way of checking how much they’ve learnt during previous task. Round three in particular works as a quick and effective AfL check! 4 POETRYOR LYRICS? This often works quite nicely as a plenary. Present the students with a mix of lyrics from the song and lines from the poem they’ve been examining, and have them see whether they can identify which is which, while justifying their reasoning. A challenge for more able students could be to redesign one to suit the other. Can they transform a line of lyrics from the song so that it suits the poem? Can it be rewritten so that it suits the poem’s tone and purpose? 5 THE MARKETPLACE The students are given a series of still images based on the poem and song. At their tables, students either self-select or are assigned particular images, which they then use to create anything from their own sentences to keywords. To help broaden the students’ perspectives and encourage the idea of multiple interpretations, announce that the classroom is now a ‘marketplace’ in which the students can move around and ‘magpie’ any ideas from other tables they like the look of, or which they feel inspired to develop into new creative works of their own. HOME LEARNING • One of the most transactional approaches to additional learning can be for the students to apply what they’ve learnt by writing a poem of their own • Encourage students to apply the techniques they’ve practised during the lesson to a different form of creative work, such as a description within a novel, or a narrative scene within a play or film