My Year 10 class are ending their term before work experience by studying an AQA literature poem. We used an AQA resource to categorise words although many of the categories were concrete (i.e. by sound, word-type, conjugation) rather than by theme. This is perhaps due to an unfamiliarity in working with themes. One student was impressive in their choice of the following categories:
The lesson ended with a plenary pyramid, which I find universally useful. These were the questions:
How famous is the poem?
What is the meaning of bravery?
Who is the writer?
How old is the poem? Is it famous?
What is the poet trying to say? Are the soldiers brave, or not?
What is the valley of death?
When was the poem set?
Do poems have to rhyme?
If not, how do you know it is a poem?
When was the poem written, and by who?
What happened to the soldiers in the poem? (I should link to the Kipling version that was largely ignored.)
What war was it?
How famous is the poem? What is it called?
