‘Conflict’: 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 poemActually 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 readingAn 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, de-contextualised 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 activityStudents 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 role-play activities which get to the heart of the poem.

Each cluster also includes one or more videos:

An interview with a poetWithin the resources for ‘At the Border’ and ‘Poppies’ 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.

Research tasks – explore context and themes for ‘Mametz Wood’, or consider some statistics from recent conflicts for ‘Poppies’, or respond to The Times’ correspondent’s eye-witness accounts of the battle described in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

Personal/empathic responses – tasks to help students understand the soldier’s actions in ‘Bayonet Charge’ or to think about the job of being a soldier for ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

Sorting activities – investigate language and theme by sorting words from ‘Bayonet Charge’, ‘Belfast Confetti’, ‘Hawk Roosting’, ‘Out of the Blue’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ into categories.

Exploring images – use punctuation marks on photographs to convey the impact of a bomb blast for ‘Belfast Confetti’, or respond to images of 9/11 for ‘Out of the Blue’.

Exploring form and structure – introduce ‘At the Border’ with a version in which lines or stanzas have been mixed up, or re-sequence jumbled versions of ‘Come On, Come Back’, or use active approaches to experiment with ‘Futility’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

Mind mapping – investigate structure and form in ‘The Falling Leaves’ with a mind map activity that could be used with any poem.

Performances – experiment with different ways of reading ‘Belfast Confetti’, work on visual presentations of ‘Flag’ using a piece of material as a prop, or prepare a vocal performance of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

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Exploring word choices – consider the effects of alternative line endings for ‘Flag’, or try an on-screen cloze activity for ‘Futility’, ‘Out of the Blue’ or ‘Poppies’.

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Following clues – make deductions about ‘The Yellow Palm’ from a selection of its nouns and noun phrases, or about ‘Poppies’ from a selection of words from each stanza.

Visual responses – create a video, Photo Story or PowerPoint version of ‘Futility’.

Peer teaching – pairs explore different aspects of form, structure and language in ‘Poppies’ before passing their notes on and adding to each other’s ideas, or groups tackle different ‘language workstation’ tasks for ‘The Yellow Palm’ and then share their findings.

Games – play a key words memory game for ‘The Right Word’, or decide which one of four poems from the cluster is the odd one out, with a game show finale.

Transforming texts – experiment with rewriting ‘The Right Word’ or ‘The Yellow Palm’ in different forms.

Revision ideas – try an interactive Blockbusters style quiz for ‘The Right Word’ or a ‘true or false’ activity for ‘The Yellow Palm’.

Comparison grids – think about how terrorism is approached in ‘Out of the Blue’ and ‘The Right Word’, or plan a written comparison of ‘The Falling Leaves’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

Practice writing tasks – explore connections between ‘Belfast Confetti’ and ‘Bayonet Charge’ with the help of a PEE framework, or choose quotations to support points about ‘Mametz Wood’ and explore them in detail, or work on exam skills with ‘next to god of course america i’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

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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