Secondary Showcase

This Let’s Think in English supports students ability to classify text types. Students revisit their expectations of poetry and prose before applying them to opening sentences of a novel and a modernist poem by Pound. They are the presented with William Carlos Williams’ poem “The red wheelbarrow” but the poem is collapsed and appears to be prose. Students are asked to consider what type of text it might be and review their classification system for poetry.

Here is a transcript [Word document] from a Year 9 lesson in an Islington school, as students discuss the cognitive conflict of the LTE lesson as they consider what type of text the collapsed poem is.

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In this Let’s Think in English lesson KS3 students explore symbolism in E E Cummings’ poem maggie and milly and molly and may. The lesson therefore explores both how the objects may symbolise aspects of the girls’ personalities and how in the final couplet the sea may have a wider (symbolic) meaning.

One of the first questions students explore in the lesson. is: “What age might the girls be?”. Here is an example of whole class feedback to the question from a mixed ability Year 7 class in Leicestershire.

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