‘Character and voice’:
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 two sets of resources are 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.
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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, decontextualised 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 roleplay 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 ‘Brendon Gallacher’, ‘Case
History (Alison: head injury)’ and ‘Horse Whisperer’
you’ll find interviews with the poets in which they
discuss their motivations and methods.
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Varied approaches
There is a wealth of ideas within the resources for 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.
Personal/empathic responses – students write
about a photograph of their younger selves for ‘Case
History (Alison: head injury)’ or create sketches and
icons to represent themselves before applying this to
‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’.
Research tasks – find out about the historical figures
mentioned in ‘Checking Out Me History’ or explore
homelessness through speaking and listening
activities for ‘Give’.
Word clouds – analyse key words from ‘Brendon
Gallacher’ and ‘Checking Out Me History’.
Sorting activities – investigate language and theme by sorting words from ‘Les Grands Seigneurs’,
‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Singh Song!’ into categories.
Visual responses – draw imagery posters for
‘Ozymandias’, use drawing, character profiles and images
to explore perceptions towards ‘Clown Punk’, or create a
series of images to represent character, mood and themes
in ‘The Hunchback in the Park’.
Weighing up themes – evaluate statements about the
themes in ‘Checking Out Me History’ or ‘Ozymandias’,
consider different interpretations of ‘Give’, or try theme
ranking activities for ‘Medusa’ and ‘My Last Duchess’.
Devised scenes and role plays – put the horse whisperer
on trial for sorcery, or interview the river god in a TV chat
show.
Mind mapping – create metaphor maps for ‘Checking Out
Me History’.
Cloze activities – focus on vocabulary choices through onscreen activities for ‘Case History: Alison (head injury)’ and
‘Les Grands Seigneurs’.
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Sequencing activities – resequence lines from ‘Give’,
‘Medusa’ or ‘Ozymandias’, or
phrases from ‘My Last Duchess’, or
stanzas from ‘On a Portrait of a
Deaf Man’ or ‘Singh Song!’, making
deductions about form and
structure.
Writing your own – students use
elements of ‘Checking Out Me
History’ and ‘Medusa’ in poems of
their own.
Games – meet ‘The River God’
through a guessing game, or
compare poems through an activity
based on the game ‘Top Trumps’.
Transformed versions – update ‘The Ruined Maid’, transforming it for a modern context.
Revision ideas – create paper-boy chains for ‘Brendon Gallacher’, try a Blockbusters style quiz for
‘Horse Whisperer’, or make a traveller’s chest to help revise key aspects of ‘Ozymandias’.
Practice writing tasks – try an exam-type task comparing ‘Give’ and ‘The Hunchback in the Park’ or
compare ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’ with ‘Case History: Alison (head injury)’ with the help of ‘true or
false’ questions before writing a practice PEE paragraph.
Adaptability
We’ve included teaching notes with suggestions for differentiation in many resources, and several
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. That could include taking
activities from other clusters.
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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: 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 support@teachit.co.uk or call us on 01225 788850.
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