Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's lesson.

My name is Miss Halliday.

and I will be teaching you today.

I'm really looking forward to today's lesson as we're going to be diving headfirst into the Eduqas anthology, looking at common themes and connections that tie this anthology together.

There are some fantastic poems in this anthology that I can't wait to share with you.

So let's get started.

So today's lesson is called Exploring the Eduqas Poetry Anthology.

And by the end of today's lesson, you will be able to explore the key themes and connections between the poems in the Eduqas anthology, but here are some keywords first that you will need in order to unlock today's lesson.

We've got anthology, connection, theme, and response.

Let's have a look at these keyword definitions, starting with the word anthology.

Now, an anthology is a collection of artistic works that have a similar form or subject.

Today, we're going to be looking at connections between some of the different poems in the anthology.

And a connection is something that joins or connects two or more things.

Often this can be a theme, and a theme is a universal idea, lesson, or message that is explored throughout a work of literature.

And finally, we're going to be forming some personal responses to some quotations and some of the poems' titles.

Now, a personal response is our reaction to something.

As I said, these words are going to be really important for today's lesson.

So if you think you might forget the definitions, then please do feel free to pause the video and take a moment to jot some of those keyword definitions down before you move on with me.

So feel free to do that now.

Here's today's lesson outline.

We're going to begin by exploring some of the themes that underpin this anthology before moving on to looking at how to form a personal response to a poem and practising that in today's lesson, but let's start first of all by exploring some of the anthology's themes.

So as I've said, we're going to be exploring the Eduqas poetry anthology.

So you will need your copy of the anthology with you.

Now, a poetry anthology is chosen with connecting themes and big ideas in mind, and the poems within the anthology will relate to these overall themes.

Now, these overall themes and big ideas form connections between the poems that you can then explore in your analysis.

Now, the Eduqas poetry anthology contains poems from 1789 up to the present day, so it spans over quite a long period of time.

And what I'd like you to consider now is, well, why do you think it's so useful and important to study poetry from multiple centuries? What insight might this give us? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you consider the importance of studying poetry that spans over centuries.

So pause the video, and you can either discuss that with the people around you, or you can consider it independently if you are working on your own, but pause the video and off you go.

Fantastic discussions and some really, really interesting suggestions made there.

So a massive well done to those of you that I heard having a similar conversation to Lucas and Andeep here.

So in response to the same question, Lucas had this to say, he said, "Reading poetry from across multiple centuries allows us to understand how the world we know today has been shaped by humanity's past experiences.

In other words, our history." And Andeep adds, "Yeah, reading poetry can help us better understand ourselves and our behaviour, but also the world around us too." So as I think both students allude to, there is real value in studying poetry that spans across multiple centuries.

Through this, we can understand how our history and how the decisions of our ancestors have led to create the world that we live in today.

So really well done if that came through in your discussions, brilliant ideas.

So let's check for understanding before we move on.

Why might we study poetry from centuries ago? Is it A because poetry from centuries ago are much more insightful than modern poems? Is it B that it can help us to understand how our world today has been shaped by our own history? Is it C because it's on the exam paper, so we study it purely because we are being assessed on it? Or is it D that poetry from centuries ago shows us how privileged and lucky we are these days? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you make your answer to selection.

Off you go.

Fantastic, and really well done if you correctly selected B.

Studying poetry from centuries ago really helps us to understand how our world today has been shaped by our history.

So well done if you remembered that.

So here are some of the really key historical events that happened during the time periods that influenced the writing of many of the poems that we are going to be studying as part of the Eduqas poetry anthology.

So we've got the First World War, the Second World War, the Second Boer War, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Bosnian War, the Late Enlightenment period, the Troubles, and the Romantic Period.

So some really significant historical events there.

And I'd like you to discuss now, well, which of these significant historical events are you already familiar with, and what do you already know about them? Are you able to give their dates? Are you able to explain how they might have shaped the society that we live in today? So I'm gonna invite you now to pause the video while you take a few minutes to really consider which of those historical events you're already familiar with and start to think about the impact that they might have had on today's society.

I'm really looking forward to hearing all of the incredible knowledge you already have and listening to you share that with one another.

If you are unable to discuss this as you're working independently, that's absolutely fine.

You can either write notes or consider this question in your head.

Pause the video while you consider those questions on screen and before we come back together.

Off you go.

Wow, I am blown away with how much knowledge you already have of so many of these historical events.

That's going to serve you super well in the coming lessons as we talk through how these events have influenced many of the poems that are on the Eduqas anthology.

So really well done there.

I'm super impressed with your prior knowledge.

Someone threw another discussion.

Now, looking at these events, which themes do you think that this poetry anthology might cover? So we've already said that many of the poems in this anthology were inspired by these historical events, now I'd like you to start thinking about what kind of themes these events have in common, and therefore what themes do you think might be addressed throughout the poetry anthology? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you consider this question, either with the people around you, sharing ideas or just thinking about it independently.

And obviously, feel free to write any ideas down if you have paper in front of you.

Pause the video and off you go to do that now.

And massive well done and thank you so much.

Let's all come back together and share some ideas with some of our Oak pupils.

So here, we're going to hear from Lucas who said, "Well, there are a lot of wars listed here.

So I'm predicting that one of the themes on the anthology and something that connects poems together might be conflict." That's a really good suggestion from Lucas.

And one that I heard from many of you as well.

I also heard many of you talking about the Enlightenment Period and the Romantic Period and perhaps speculating that nature might be a key theme in this anthology.

So again, really well done because these are all key themes that this anthology addresses.

So, and some of you have already hit the nail on the head, but here are four really key themes from the Eduqas anthology.

We've got war, as Lucas suggested, power, nature, and relationships.

So a massive well done to those of you that did mention these themes.

You were absolutely right, and it was great to see so many of you making really accurate predictions about the themes that we might see in this anthology purely based on the events that inspired them, that shows really great inferencing skills.

And those skills are gonna serve you really well when we come to reading poems for the first time.

So fantastic inference work there, really well done.

So we're going to move on to the first task of the lesson now.

Now, the Eduqas poetry anthology has 18 poems in, which is quite a lot.

So what we're going to do to break it down and make it slightly easier for you to make comparisons between the poems as that's what you'll be asked to do on your exam, we are going to group the poems by theme using those four themes that I've just introduced to you.

So here are the titles of the poems in groups, and I'd like you to decide which of the four themes that you think belongs to each of the groups.

So remember, the themes that we have broken the poems down into are nature, war, power, and relationships.

So you will need to look at these different groups of poems and think, well, do I think that this group of poems is the War Group? Do I think it's the Nature Group? Do I think it's the Relationships Group? Or do I think it's the Power Group? And then you're going to assign one of the four themes to each of the four groups.

Now, you can do this in groups or you can do it independently.

However you would prefer to work today, that is up to you.

But I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you have a go at completing this activity.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with, so off you go to assign those themes to each group.

Fantastic work and really well done there.

And here are the groupings that we are going to be using to study the poems in.

So we've got the War Group, which contains "The Soldier", "Mametz Wood", "The Manhunt", "A Wife in London", and "Dulce et Decorum Est".

We've got the Power Group, which contains "Ozymandias", "London", "Haw Roosting", and "Living Space".

We've got the Nature Group, which contains "Death of a Naturalist", "To Autumn, and "The Prelude".

And finally, we've got the theme of Relationships, and the poems that explore the theme of Relationships are "As Imperceptibly as Grief", "Sonnet 43", "She Walks in Beauty", "Cosy Apologia", "Valentine", and "Afternoons".

So really well done if you've got those groupings, fantastic prediction work.

So onto looking at how to form personal responses now and practising them in this lesson.

So a really key part of understanding and analysing a poem is having a personal response to it, so a personal reaction to that poem.

Reading poetry is, at its very core, an emotional reaction to something.

And our emotions are really personal to us.

We all experience emotion differently and different things tend to trigger different emotions in different people.

So our emotions are really unique to us, and that's why poetry is so fun to study because actually different people have really different interpretations and different understandings of different poems. So that makes discussions during poetry study really, really interesting and insightful.

So when considering your personal response to a poem, you might ask yourself the following questions, do I think that this poem is important? Why does this poem speak or not speak to me? Okay, there will be some poems in the anthology that resonate with you more than others, and that's absolutely okay because we've all got our unique experiences that we are bringing to the study of this anthology.

And finally, what emotions do I get from this poem? What emotions can I detect in this poem? What emotions is this poem making me feel? These are all really important questions to ask yourself the first time that you read a poem as this can really help you to articulate your own personal response to that poem.

So we're gonna have a look at what initial emotional reaction you have to some lines and words from a selection of the poems. So let's have a look, first of all, at one of our Oak pupils reactions.

So we've got Izzy here who is reacting to this specific line from "Dulce et Decorum Est", as an example, "In all my dreams before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning." And Izzy said, "After having read these lines, my initial emotional reaction to these lines is pity and sadness.

The word helpless made me feel real sympathy.

And the word choking made me feel terribly sad because it sounds like someone is suffering terribly." Now, Izzy has not read this poem.

She doesn't need to have read this poem to have a personal reaction or response to the lines that I've given her.

And that's absolutely okay, okay? Having a personal response doesn't mean having a really solid understanding of what it is you are reading.

It's just that really gut emotional and raw response that you get the first time that you read something.

And your response will be influenced by specific words that tend to stand out to you, or words that you're familiar with, or words that you personally associate with memories or times that you've had.

And again, that is personal to you and that's what makes poetry so fun because everybody brings their own personal biases, their own personal experiences, their own personal emotions to a poem.

And everybody's instinctive and initial reaction to a poem will be slightly different, and that's really exciting.

So a massive thank you to Izzy there for sharing her personal response.

And I hope you understand that actually because it is a personal response, there is absolutely no right or wrong answer.

So let's check for understanding.

True or false, Andeep read this line, and we would expect his emotional response to be exactly the same as Izzy's.

I'm gonna give you a moment to decide whether you think that is true or whether you think that that is false.

So pause the video and make your decision now.

Fantastic, and really well done if you selected false.

What I'm going to ask you to do now is the really hard part, and I'm going to ask you to justify why that statement is in fact false using one of the two reasons below.

So again, I'm going to invite you to pause the video while you read the two justifications and decide which you think is the correct one for that statement being false.

So pause the video and off you go to do that now.

Fantastic.

And a massive congratulations if you correctly selected B.

We've said that people are really likely to have different responses to a poem because we all have different life experiences that we are bringing to the reading of that poem.

So really well done if you remember that.

And remember, it's absolutely okay to have a different response to a poem from somebody else.

That's what we would expect.

So we are now going to practise you having your own personal responses to different lines and phrases from some of the poems below.

As you read them, I'd like you to really consider each of the lines and how they make you feel, but also why they make you feel that way.

Now, just to give you a little bit of context so you can think about the line in terms of the context of the theme it represents, I have actually told you the theme or the grouping that this poem belongs to.

So remember, we have those four groupings of war, power, nature, and relationships.

And I've indicated which group the poem belongs to in the grid to help you out.

So here are the lines and phrases from some of the poems that you are going to be responding to.

So on the left hand side, we've got the line itself.

So we've got the word "relic", and that is taken from the poem "Mametz Wood", from the war grouping in the anthology.

And at this moment, you will think, well, what is my emotional response? And you're going to write it down for me.

The second line or phrase is, "She walks in beauty like the night." And that is from the poem "She Walks in Beauty", that is from the relationships grouping.

We've got the phrase, "Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair," and that is from the poem "Ozymandias", which is from our power cluster.

And finally, we've got, "The orange sky of evening died away," and that is from extract from "The Prelude", and that is from the nature grouping.

And I'm hoping you've noticed that I've given you a line or a phrase from a poem from each of the thematic groupings that we're going to be studying.

So I'd like you to do this task independently as I'm interested in your personal response to the line.

So I'm not looking for you to work with other people here.

I very much want you to do this independently 'cause I want to hear your personal opinions and responses.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you have a go at practising articulating your personal response to lines from some of the poems in the Eduqas anthology.

I am really excited to see what you come up with as I'm really hoping you'll see how different people's emotional responses to different words and phrases will be according to their life experiences.

So pause the video and offer you to complete that grid now.

Brilliant, brilliant work.

And it was lovely to see so many of you really thinking about what response you had to that line or that phrase or that word, and trying to articulate it in a representative way.

So really well done, some really great work there.

So what I thought would be really nice now, just to show you the real value of discussing poetry with other people, is for you to be able to share your emotional reactions with a peer and reflect on your reactions using the questions below.

So you might want to consider, did you have a similar or a different emotional reaction to the person that you've shared your response with? And why do you think then that might be? Are you able to express why you think you might have had a different response to them? Now, those of you that are working independently, even though you don't have a partner, you can absolutely still have a go at this activity because what you can do is you can look at your responses to different themes in the anthology.

So for example, have a look at your response to the theme of war and the line that corresponded with that theme, and then compare it to your response to a line from the nature grouping, for example.

And think about why your responses between themes might be slightly different.

What life experiences have you had that might have influenced your response to different themes within the poetry anthology? So everybody can still get involved in this activity and reflect on their own personal responses to those lines and phrases.

Now, when you are completing this task, remember to be really respectful of other people's opinions, okay? As I said earlier, there is no right or wrong.

Therefore, we don't need to be telling other people that we really disagree with them.

We can just say, "Oh, that's really interesting.

I felt this." Okay, so we're not disagreeing with other people because everybody's entitled their opinion.

We are just sharing our own personal responses.

So what I'm going to invite you to do now is pause the video while you have a go at sharing our emotional reactions and/or reflecting on your reactions using those prompt questions on screen.

Pause the video, and off you go.

Fantastic.

Really, really respectful interactions going on there.

And fascinating to hear such a wide variety of different emotional responses to those lines and phrases.

So thank you very much.

Brilliant, brilliant discussions.

So to summarise the learning from today.

Well, first of all, an anthology is a collection of artistic works that have a similar form of subject.

The Eduqas poetry anthology contains 18 texts that date back to 1789, so really spanning poetry from multiple centuries.

And remember that reading poetry from multiple centuries really helps us to understand how the world that we know today has been shaped by our history.

Furthermore, exploring titles and quotations from poems can help you to see potential connections between them.

And lastly, please remember that your personal response to a poem is super important and that everybody's personal responses will be different because we all have different life experiences that we are bringing to our understanding of the poem.

Thank you so much for coming to today's lesson.

I hope that this lesson has got you really excited to start diving into some of those poems in a lot more detail and start discussing your personal reactions to them as we understand the poems in greater depth.

Thank you so much for coming.

I've really enjoyed teaching you, and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.

See you later.