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Analysing song lyrics can build students’ confidence with unseen poetry texts

BRING ON THE FIREWORKS!

Lesson plan: ENGLISH KS4

As teachers, we are all under pressure to ensure our students perform, which often leaves us little room to stray from the path (especially when teaching KS4). Although performance is paramount, I believe nothing can evolve unless students are interested, invested and ultimately have a love of learning. It was this lesson plan that marked a turning point for my students, with even the most reluctant referring to poetry as ‘cool’. Not only does this lesson inject fun into teaching poetry, but it also supports the development of key GCSE skills.

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There are a variety of activities that could be used depending on time available and ability of the group. These include:

1. Unpicking the textFirst, get the students to read the lyrics through (either to themselves or tag read). You can then play Firework to the students and discuss how songs can be identified as poetry. Get students to summarise what the poem is about in their own words and find quotations that support their ideas. Prompt questions could include:

MAIN ACTIVITIES

WHY TEACH THIS?This lesson plan will put life back into studying

poetry in the classroom. It will ignite interest and

work on building skills needed for approaching

unseen poetry.

KEY CURRICULUM LINKS Pupils should be able to:

+ Confidently identify key techniques within an

unseen text. + Explain the effect

of key techniques and the intentions of the writer.

+ Approach an exam-style question.

STARTER ACTIVITY As students enter the classroom, three sentences should be displayed on the board:

+ ‘You’re a firework’+ ‘Like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow’+ ‘After a hurricane comes a rainbow’

The task is to identify the devices used and explain why they are effective. The challenge task would be to consider any alternative interpretations of the quotes.

This task immediately gets students identifying techniques and gives them an insight into the text we will be focusing on in the lesson (Firework by Katy Perry).

Can poetry set off fireworks in our classroom?Q

+ What is the purpose of the poem?+ What effect does the writer want to have on readers?+ What emotive language can be found in the poem?

A class discussion about the meaning of the poem at this point with allow all students to establish this understanding before proceeding to the next task.

2. Colour codingNow students should work their way through the poem and highlight language devices in one colour and structural devices in another.

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THE AUTHORLuella Murray is an English

NQT at The Stanway School in Colchester.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES+ Video link to the song used in the lesson: youtube.com/

watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw

+ Lyrics to the song used in the lesson: azlyrics.com/

lyrics/katyperry/firework.html

GOING DEEPER+ Get students thinking

about explicit and implicit ideas. This will get them into the habit of thinking about alternative interpretations

of texts.

+ Get students to carry out an acting on feedback task based on the feedback they

receive from the self/peer assessment.

+ Get students to mark a model answer against the mark scheme to support understanding of what is

required for each level.

They should also label these with the relevant device. They should keep their writing as neat as possible, as they will be swapping their work with a partner. Depending on the ability of the group and how many devices have been identified in a set amount of time, you may want to go through some of the possible devices that they could pick out. This task gets students used to looking at an unseen poem and annotating.

+ Support cards including lists of language/structural devices could be given to lower ability students. + Challenge cards could be given to the higher ability students, which would ask them to look for particularly difficult devices in particular parts of the poem (more focused questioning).

3. Think, pair, share. Students should swap their colour-coded copy of the poem with their partner. Ask students to look through the annotations and add to these annotations with the effect of the techniques that have been identified. Prompt questions could be displayed on the board at this point to support annotations (e.g. what feeling is created here/are there any implied meanings behind the quote/why has the writer used this particular device?). This task will challenge them to develop ideas that have been identified by other students.

+ Students should have a set amount of time to work on

this independently; + Students should then share ideas with their partner and add to their notes;+ Students should then share ideas with the class.

The class teacher could model the annotating on the board to show students the expectation and quality of annotations needed. Levelled questioning at this point will also allow the teacher to direct questions to students based on their individual ability.

4. Exam-style question By this stage, students should have detailed annotations, which will then support them with this exam-style question task:

How is the speaker presented within the poem?

In your answer, consider the poet’s:+ Choice of language+ Use of structure and form [24 marks]

This task could be carried out in a number of ways. For example:

+ Students could be given sentence starters to assist with structuring their writing;+ Shared writing could be a good way to involve many students and model how to construct a paragraph;+ Model paragraphs could be shown to students prior to answering the question so they are able to visualise what an answer may look like; + Students could complete the question individually and then peer assess each other’s work using a structured checklist or a student-friendly GCSE mark scheme.

SUMMARYBy incorporating modern music into poetry lessons, it makes the topic relatable for students and gets them to invest in their learning. This lesson template could easily be adapted to suit various different songs and poems alike, and small tweaks here and there will make it suitable for all abilities. The lesson plan works on learners’ confidence when approaching an unseen text, their collaborative learning skills and their writing skills and aims to change their mindset when it comes to poetry.

NEXT STEPS+ Allow students to choose

suitable songs to use in future lessons, ultimately giving them ownership of

their learning.

+ Begin using the same lesson style with different types of poetry so learners can see how similar poetry

and music is.