unit 2: poetry across time - ark globe...

UNIT 2: POETRY ACROSS TIME Independent Home study Booklet

AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE

NAME: ___________________________________________

An overview of Unit 2

The exam is 1 hour and 15 minutes long and counts for 35% of your final mark for literature.

AO1: respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to support

interpretations

This means you must have your own critical ideas about a poem and think imaginatively about the poets

ideas. You must then go back into the text and find suitable quotes to support the ideas you have.

AO2: Explain how language, structure and form contribute to the writers’ presentation of ideas, themes

and settings

This means that you have to explore the texts in detail and comment on the techniques used by the

writer to get their points across

AO3* (section A only) explain links between texts, evaluating writers different ways of expressing

meaning and achieving effects

Section A: 45 minutes: Poems from the ’Moon on the Tides’ anthology: Conflict

There will be 2 questions on this section. (Question 5 and Question 6)

You must choose one of these questions to answer.

The question will include one named poem from the Conflict cluster.

You may choose any other poem from the Conflict cluster to compare.

You must focus on the exam question and only pick out the key things to write about.

You must plan your response carefully.

Section B: 30 Minutes: Unseen Poems

You will be given a poem you have never seen before.

You will be asked to analyse it in relation to a particular theme.

In your response you must discuss the writer’s use of language, form and structure.

It is important to plan your response carefully.

You are advised to say a lot about a little – choose short quotes to unpick and relate to the key idea in

the question.

Section A: Conflict

Brainstorm words and phrases associated with conflict around the image.

Use this guide to help you to complete an analysis of each poem.

Week 1

Complete a single poem analysis of the poem you have studied

Name of Poem

Themes and Ideas

Form

Structure

Language Quote Analysis

Week 2

Use the grid to compare the poems you have studied

Name of Poems

Themes and Ideas about conflict

Form

Structure

Language

Practise writing your comparative essay

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________

Week Three

Use the boxes to record which poems address different themes.

Poems can be placed in more than one box.

Causes of Conflict Effects of Conflict

Nature Reality of Battles

Sadness and Loss Divisions and Divided Society

Patriotism Individual Experiences

Death Helplessness

Week 4

Essay Practice: Compare two poems that highlight divisions in society

Name of Poems

Themes and Ideas

Form

Structure

Language

Practise writing your comparative essay (you have 45 minutes)

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

____

Week 5

RAG Rating

For each poem tick either Red, Amber or Green

Green = dream (you would love this poem to come up in the exam) write an A* observation about it in

the comment box.

Example

This powerful ballad throws the reader into the battlefield giving you a vivid sense of the moment,

Yellow = mellow (you’re not too scared by it – but there are some concerns if it came up in the exam)

make a note of what you are struggling with in the comments box

Example

I can never remember the devices in this poem

Red= dread (you would hate for this poem to come up in the exam) Write down the questions you still

have about the poem.

Example

What is the purpose of anaphora?

Rank the poems 1-15.

1 = I know the most about this poem and would be confident to rite in detail about it.

15 = I know the least about this poem and cannot write very much about it

Conflict Poems – RAG Analysis 1

Poem R A G Comments Rank 1-15

Flag

Extract from Out of the Blue

Mametz Wood

The Yellow Palm

The Right Word

At the Border 1979

Belfast Confetti

Poppies

Futility

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Bayonet Charge

The Falling Leaves

Come On, Come Back

next to of course god america i

Hawk Roosting

Week 6

Essay Practice

Write your essay question here

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Plan your response using the comparison grid

Name of Poems

Themes and Ideas

Form

Structure

Language

Practise writing your comparative essay (you have 45 minutes)

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

_____________

Use the assessment Grid to check your response

Revision Tips

In your study groups – try to answer all red questions from your Rag Grid

Complete a single poem analysis about the poems you ranked 10-15

Go through the poetic terms at the back of the booklet and highlight the devises

you are confident about – find examples of them in the unseen section of your

‘Moon on the Tides’ Anthology.

Look up the devices you are unsure of – find examples of them in the ‘Conflict’

section of the anthology

Choose two poems at random and complete a comparative grid about them

Look at your themes grid. Create an exam question which explores one of the

themes.

Look at the image below. Identify each poem

Find a quote for each image.

After studying all of the poems in the anthology, complete the RAG analysis grid.

Focus your revision on red poems and those ranked 10-15.

Poem R A G Comments Rank 1-15

Flag

Extract from Out of the Blue

Mametz Wood

The Yellow Palm

The Right Word

At the Border 1979

Belfast Confetti

Poppies

Futility

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Bayonet Charge

The Falling Leaves

Come On, Come Back

next to of course god america i

Hawk Roosting

Use a practice question to complete a comparison grid

Name of Poems

Themes and Ideas about conflict

Form

Structure

Language

Name of Poems

Themes and Ideas

Form

Structure

Language

CONFLICT POETRY EXAMINER’S QUESTIONS

1. Compare how the consequences of a conflict are shown in Futility and one other poem.

2. Compare how conflict is presented in The Charge of the Light Brigade and one other poem.

3. Compare how the consequences of conflict are presented in Mametz Wood and one other poem.

4. Compare how the poets express their opinions about war in Mametz Wood and one other poem.

5. Compare how the poets present ideas about conflict from different perspectives in Hawk Roosting

and one other poem.

6. Compare how attitudes to conflict are shown in The Charge of the Light Brigade and one other poem.

7. Compare how attitudes to war are presented in next to of course god america i and one other poem.

8. Compare the ideas and attitudes shown to war in The Yellow Palm and one other poem.

9. Compare how divisions in society are presented in At the Border, 1979 and one other poem.

10. Compare how individual experiences are conveyed in Poppies and one other poem.

11. Compare how feelings of helplessness are presented in Out of the Blue and one other poem.

12. Compare how patriotism is presented in next to of course god america i and one other poem.

13. Compare how individual experiences of conflict are explored in Bayonet Charge and one other

poem.

14. Compare how the reality of battles is presented in Bayonet Charge and one other poem.

15. Compare how poets use natural images in Hawk Roosting and one other poem.

16. Compare how the causes of conflict are presented in next to of course god america i and one other

poem.

17. Compare how the effects of conflict are presented in Out of the Blue and one other poem.

18. Compare how poets use form to effect in Belfast Confetti and one other poem.

19. Compare how conflict is presented in The Charge of the Light Brigade and one other poem.

20. Compare how internal conflict is presented in ‘Flag’ and one other poem

Remember to use the comparison grid to help you to plan a good response.

IGCSE Excel Literature

Unseen Poetry Revision

Name ___________________________________________________________________

Independent Tasks

Each Week there will be a poem on the student drive. Use the 5 steps to help you to generate ideas

about it.

STEP ONE: Work out what the poem is about…

What can you work out from the title and the words – create semantic fields

What is the subject of the poem?

Who is speaking?

Who is the narrator speaking to?

STEP TWO: Identify the themes and message of the poem…

Why has the poet written the poem?

What are they trying to say?

What ideas are they using?

Is it an emotional response to something that’s happened?

Is it trying to get an emotional response from the reader?

Is it portraying a message or opinion on a subject or event?

STEP THREE: Identify the attitudes and feelings in the poem…

What are the different emotions and feelings of the narrator or poet?

What is the mood or atmosphere of the poem (e.g. sad, angry, etc.)?

What words are present? Can you identify a semantic field?

How has the poet used different poetic techniques to show these attitudes and feelings?

STEP FOUR: Identify the poetic techniques used in the poem…

What are the different poetic techniques that the poet has used to show the attitudes and feelings

in the poem?

How has the poet shown these feelings through form and structure (e.g. rhyme, rhythm, line

length, stanza length, etc.)?

How has the poet used poetic devices to show these feelings (e.g. metaphors, similes, caesura,

enjambment, alliteration, juxtaposition, personification, etc.)?

STEP FIVE: Explore your personal response to the poem…

How do you feel about the poem?

How well does the poet get the message across in the poem?

What is the impact of the poem on the reader (refer to ‘the reader’, rather than ‘I’ when talking

about the impact of the poem)?

Are there any other ways the poem could be interpreted?

Unseen Poetry Practice – use the 5 steps to help you to analyse the following poem.

Dark August by Derek Walcott

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky

of this black August. My sister, the sun,

broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume

like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,

she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,

my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls

like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.

Don't you know I love you but am hopeless

at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,

the air with gossiping mosquitoes,

and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,

parting the beads of the rain,

with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all with not be as it was, but it will be true

(you see they will not let me love

as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,

The black rain, the white hills, when once

I loved only my happiness and you.

Question

How does the writer express the speaker’s feelings of sadness?

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________

Use this mark scheme to help you with your response

Unseen Poetry Practice

November Night

1 The night tinkles like ice in glasses.

Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.

The brown air fumes at the shop windows,

Tries the door, and sidles past.

5 I gulp down winter raw. The heady

Darkness swirls with tenements.

In a brown fuzz of cottonwool

Lamps fade up crags, die into pits.

Frost in my lungs is harsh as leaves

10 Scraped up on paths. - I look up, there,

A high roof sails, at the mast-head

Fluttering a grey and ragged star.

The world’s a bear shrugged in his den.

It’s snug and close in the snoring night.

15 And outside like chrysanthemums

The fog unfolds its bitter scent.

NORMAN MACCAIG

What is the speaker saying about this specific night November?

How does the poet present these feelings?

In Oak Terrace

Old and alone, she sits at nights,

Nodding before the television.

The house is quiet now. She knits,

rises to put the kettle on,

watches a cowboy’s killing, reads

the local Births and Deaths, and falls

asleep at ‘Growing stock-piles of war-heads’.

A world that threatens worse ills

fades. She dreams of life spent

in the one house: suffers again

poverty, sickness, abandonment,

a child’s death, a brother’s brain

melting to madness. Seventy years

of common trouble; the kettle sings.

At midnight she says her silly prayers,

And takes her teeth out, and collects her night-things.

TONY CONNOR

How does the speaker feel about old age?

How does the poet present the speaker’s feelings?

Names

She was Eliza for a few weeks

when she was a baby –

Eliza Lily. Soon it changed to Lil.

Later she was Miss Steward in the baker’s shop

And then ‘my love’, ‘my darling’, Mother.

Widowed at thirty, she went back to work

As Mrs Hand. Her daughter grew up,

Married and gave birth.

Now she was Nanna. ‘Everybody

Calls me Nanna,’ she would say to visitors.

And so they did – friends, tradesmen, the doctor.

In the geriatric ward

They used the patients’ Christian names.

‘Lil,’ we said, ‘or Nanna,’

But it wasn’t in her file

And for those last bewildered weeks

She was Eliza once again.

WENDY COPE

How does the speaker feel about the importance of names during a lifetime?


Impressions of a New Boy

This school is huge – I hate it!

Please take me home.

Steep stairs cut in stone,

Peeling ceiling far too high,

The Head said ‘Wait’ so I wait alone,

Alone though Mum stands here, close by.

How does the speaker feel about his first day at secondary school?


The voice is loud – I hate it!


‘Come. Sit. What is your name?’

Trembling lips. The words won’t come.

The head says ‘Speak’, but my cheeks flame,

I hear him give a quiet sigh.

The room is full – I hate it


A sea of faces stare at me.

My desk is much too small.

Its wooden ridge rubs my knee,

But the Head said ‘Sit’ so though I’m tall

I know that I must try.

The yard is full – I hate it.


Bodies jostle me away,

Pressing me against the wall.

25 Then one boy says, ‘Want to play?’

The boy says, ‘Catch’ and throws a ball

And playtime seems to fly.

This school is great - I love it.

MARIAN COLLIHOLE

On The Train

Cradled through England between flooded fields

rocking, rocking the rails, my head-phones on,

the black box of my Walkman on the table.

Hot tea trembles in its plastic cup.

I'm thinking of you waking in our bed

thinking of me on the train. Too soon to phone.

The radio speaks in the suburbs, in commuter towns,

in cars unloading children at school gates,

is silenced in dark parkways down the line

before locks click and footprints track the frost

and trains slide out of stations in the dawn

dreaming their way towards the blazing bone-ship.

The vodaphone you are calling

may have been switched off.

15 Please call later. And calling later,

calling later their phones ring in the rubble

and in the rubble of suburban kitchens

the wolves howl into silent telephones.

I phone. No answer. Where are you now?

The train moves homeward through the morning

Tonight I'll be home safe, but talk to me, please.

Pick up the phone. Today I'm tolerant

of mobiles. Let them say it. I'll say it too.

Darling, I'm on the train.

How does the speaker feel on the journey home?

How does he poet present these feelings?

(the poet did not give a title to this poem)

I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself

to the National Health. I'm sure they can use

the jellies and tubes and syrups and glues,

the web of nerves and veins, the loaf of brains,

and assortment of fillings and stitches and wounds,

blood - a gallon exactly of bilberry soup –

the chassis or cage or cathedral of bone;

but not the heart, they can leave that alone.

They can have the lot, the whole stock:

the loops and coils and sprockets and springs and rods,

the twines and cords and strands,

the face, the case, the cogs and the hands,

but not the pendulum, the ticker;

leave that where it stops or hangs.

Simon Armitage

How does the poet feel about his body?


unit 2: poetry across time - ark globe...

Documents