Power and Conflict poetry: the scheme in five minutes

Transcript

Introduction0:00

This is Between the Lines, and this is the walkthrough of our Power and Conflict poetry scheme of learning. I'm Hannah.

The scheme at a glance0:08

Power and Conflict poetry is written for Literature Paper 2, Section B, the poetry anthology. It's 39 lessons of sixty minutes, which is about six to ten weeks, with three levels of support throughout. The lessons run in five sequences: The power of rulers, lessons 1 to 10; The power of nature, lessons 11 to 17; Soldiers in battle, lessons 18 to 24; Memory, loss and identity, lessons 25 to 35; The exam, lessons 36 to 39. There are five assessment points. Four are Feedback Loop kits, in lessons 10, 17, 24 and 35, each one a comparison of two poems the class has just studied, and the fifth is the end-of-unit essay in Lesson 38, with its feedback lesson after it.

One lesson0:56

Let me show you with Lesson 3, Ozymandias. The big question is: How does Shelley show that human power does not last? Apply is about fifteen minutes, and it has two parts. First you explode one quotation together. In this lesson it's "The lone and level sands stretch far away". Before you reveal anything, students try the four empty boxes on the first explode slide: method, zoom in, effect, purpose. Then you think aloud through the full version. The method is alliteration in the last line of the sonnet, with no pause from start to finish. The word to zoom in on is "lone": it tells us nothing else is left, and "level" means flat, because the desert has worn everything down. The effect: the long, slow line makes the reader see sand going on for ever, with the king's statue a tiny broken thing inside it. The purpose: Shelley, a Romantic who hated tyranny, gives the last word to nature and time. That is the whole analytical move the exam rewards, done out loud, once a lesson, for the whole scheme. Then the hinge question, on mini-whiteboards. Who tells the reader about the statue in Ozymandias? The right answer is B: the speaker, who repeats what a traveller told him. And this is the bit I'd ask every teacher to use. The handbook tells you what each wrong answer means. A student who picks A, the king himself, has mixed up the inscription with the speaker, so they start on Securing. A student who picks C, the sculptor, has spotted him in the poem but missed the frame, so you draw the chain of voices on the board: speaker, traveller, sculptor, king. The hinge question is how you decide, in thirty seconds, who starts on which level of support. That's what it's for.

Three levels of support2:40

Master is the last twenty-five minutes, and it's where the three levels do their work. Everyone in the room answers the same question as a What–How–Why paragraph. In Lesson 3 it's: How does Shelley show that human power does not last in Ozymandias? Securing, aiming for a 4, gives a choice of exact quotations, here "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies", "Nothing beside remains" and "boundless and bare", a worked example on a different quotation, and sentence starters for What, How and Why. Strengthening, aiming for grades 5 to 6, gives prompts instead of starters: a clear point for What, then choose a quotation from after the volta, name the method, irony, alliteration or caesura, and zoom in on one word, and for Why, what Shelley, who hated tyranny, wanted the reader to think about rulers like this one, with a checklist. Soaring, aiming for grades 7 to 9, gives a debatable statement to argue with: In Ozymandias art lasts longer than power. How far do you agree? Two paragraphs, the second beginning with an alternative reading. Same poem, same question, same standard. Only the scaffolding changes.

Feedback Loop kits3:52

Four times in the scheme, the Master phase is a Feedback Loop kit: a twenty-five minute progress check that fits inside the lesson. You place the paragraph in one of the six AQA levels, using our indicative content for this task. There is no raw mark, and that's deliberate. A six out of thirty tells a student one thing, that they got six. A level, in AQA's own words, tells them what the paragraph does now and what the next one asks for.

Every scheme, the same shape4:19

That's the Power and Conflict poetry scheme. The same structure runs through every Between the Lines scheme, so a teacher who has taught one has taught the shape of all of them, and a student who moves classes mid-year lands in a lesson they recognise. Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education if you want to show a colleague what a lesson looks like before they open the folders. Thank you for watching, and I hope your classes find the poems as rewarding as mine have.