Hello everybody.

And a warm welcome to today's lesson.

My name is Miss Halliday and I'll be teaching you today.

In today's lesson, we are going to be reading and understanding the poem, "Mametz Wood", which features in the "Eduqas Poetry Anthology".

For today's lesson, you will absolutely need your copy of the "Eduqas Poetry Anthology".

So please make sure you have it with you.

And if you don't, pause the video and off you go to get it before you continue.

Great, you've got it.

So let's get started.

So today's lesson is called, "Understanding 'Mametz Wood'".

And by the end of today's lesson, you will be able to understand the story of the poem, "Mametz Wood" and explain the events that inspired it.

But first, here are some really important keywords that you'll need to unlock today's learning.

Starting with the word futile, which means pointless.

Now, a relic is an object that is usually of historical interest, which has survived an earlier time.

The word inexperienced means having little knowledge or experience in something.

Fortified will also be a keyword in today's lesson, and it means to be made strong or secure.

And finally, the word slaughter, which you might already be familiar with, means the killing of many people or animals unjustly or in a particularly cruel manner.

Each of these words is gonna be really fundamental to today's learning.

So if you feel that you once take a moment to pause the video and jot down the keyword definitions, then please feel free to do just that.

Here's today's lesson outline.

We're gonna begin by exploring the context that inspired the writing of this poem before moving on to actually reading the poem and identifying how the context influenced the poem.

But let's start first of all by exploring the context.

This poem is part of our war cluster, and the young soldiers who died at war are described by this poet as wasted.

So what I'd like you to think now as a little bit of a starter activity is, well, what do you think that the poet's attitude towards war is if he's describing young soldiers as wasted? And why do you think that? Now you can do this as a discussion activity by speaking to other people around you, or if you are on your own, you can either jot ideas down or just consider this question in your head.

But I'd like you now to pause the video while you consider what the poet's attitude might be towards war before we read the poem.

Off you go.

Fantastic discussions and some really insightful and perceptive suggestions there.

And I heard many of you saying similar to Lucas, but actually you think that the poet views war as a futile or pointless waste of life because of that word, wasted.

So really well done if you got that brilliant inference work.

So in 2001, the Welsh poet, Owen Sheers who wrote this poem, encountered the story of the Battle of Mametz Wood, which occurred in July, 1916.

He was so moved by the story that he later in 2005 wrote the poem, "Mametz Wood".

So this is one of the newer poems in our Eduqas anthology.

However, what I would like you to discuss now is, well, if the poem was inspired by the events of 1916, then which war does this poem likely relate to? So what I'm going to invite you to do now is pause the video while you consider that question again, either with people around you or just thinking about it independently if that's how you're working today.

Off you go.

Fantastic and really well done to many of you who recognise that this must be a poem about World War I because World War I occurred between 1914 and 1918, and this poem was inspired by the events of 1916, which sits smack bang in the middle of those days of World War I.

So really well done if you managed to work that out.

Brilliant knowledge.

So when young men enlisted into the army in World War I, they were often sorted into regiments based on where they were from.

Now, the 38th division was comprised of soldiers from Wales, and most of these soldiers were young men who had been motivated to enlist by deceptive propaganda.

And if you remember, you might have seen that many of that propaganda was done through posters, which either presented not going to war as cowardly, or it presented going to war as some kind of major adventure.

And that was quite misleading as we're going to find out.

Although brave and really enthusiastic, many of these men were actually really poorly trained.

They were ill-equipped, and they were very, very inexperienced.

Okay, so they didn't have much knowledge of war practically, and obviously they had not fought in a war before, so they were very inexperienced in combat.

So what I'd like to think now is, well, why is it so important that soldiers are trained properly? And whose responsibility do you think it is to ensure that soldiers are trained properly and have the right equipment? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while again you consider those questions either independently or in groups, whichever you are able to do today.

Pause the video and off you go.

Fantastic discussions.

And it was really great to hear many of you talking about the importance of soldiers being properly prepared and trained.

You've got to remember that these soldiers are handling very, very high tech equipment that is also very dangerous.

So if these soldiers are not properly trained, accidents can very easily happen.

It's also problematic when soldiers aren't trained because they're in such a dangerous and tense and very kind of changeable situation.

So if anything happens that they're not prepared for, that could end in the loss of their life, which is obviously very serious and very, very unfortunate and sad.

So it is absolutely imperative that any soldier sent to war are properly and adequately trained and are given the correct equipment.

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

Great work there.

So let's check your understanding of what we've discussed thus far.

Which of the following statements is true of the 38th division? Is it A, that many of the men had enlisted into the war as a direct result of the propaganda being circulated at the time? Is it B that most of the men were from Scotland? Is it C that many of the men were very inexperienced and poorly trained? Or think it's D, that most of the men were older men with families at home? I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you make your answer selection.

And really well done if you remembered correctly that it is in fact A and C.

Many of the men in the 38th division had enlisted into the war as a result of the propaganda that they had seen at home.

And secondly, many of these men were very, very inexperienced and poorly trained and equipped.

So well done if you remembered that.

Brilliant understanding.

So Mametz is a village in France, and the Battle of Mametz Wood was part of the Battle of the Somme.

So I'd like you to discuss now, well, what do you already know about the Battle of the Somme? And I'm guessing that many of you will have studied this in history.

So I'd like you to think back to your history lessons and think about what you can remember about the Battle of the Somme in World War I.

So pause the video and discuss that or think about it independently now.

Fantastic work.

And wow, your history teachers are doing a really good job 'cause I've been really impressed with how much knowledge you already have about the Battle of the Somme.

So fantastic for sharing that knowledge there.

Now just to recap, to make sure that we are all on the same page, the Battle of the Somme was a costly battle fought between July and November in 1916 during World War I and the Battle of the Somme resulted in over a million casualties and minimal territorial gain for the Allies.

Now, during the Battle of Mametz Wood, British troops captured the wood from the Germans, a task that they assumed would be very easy and would be achieved in a pure matter of hours.

Okay, so they had quite high hopes for this battle.

They were feeling very optimistic about it.

Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that Mametz Wood was heavily fortified, so heavily guarded, heavily secured with machine guns and trenches, and was defended by a very, very well-trained regiment of German soldiers.

Now, let's think about why that was problem for the Welsh soldiers in the 38th division by thinking about, well, what do we already know about the Welsh soldiers in the 38th division who were fighting in this battle in particular? What condition were they in and what do we know about their experience? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you try and remember what we have learned about the 38th division, and if you can, think about why that might have been a problem when they came up against this regiment of German soldiers.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while I discuss that with the people around you.

Off you go.

Fantastic discussions and some really great recall there.

So well done to those of you that remembered that we learned that the Welsh soldiers in the 38th division were mostly really poorly trained, ill-equipped and quite inexperienced.

And the reason that that caused such issues is because as we've just read, the wood was actually fortified by very, very well-trained German soldiers.

So what we've got here is poorly trained Welsh soldiers versus very, very well-trained and heavily armed German soldiers.

Now that was not going to go well, was it? And it was really, really unfortunate for those Welsh soldiers who unfortunately just hadn't been given the training or equipment that they needed to really kind of succeed in this battle.

So unfortunately, despite the army's optimism and then thinking that this would be all wrapped up within a number of hours, the battle actually ended up lasting for five days and over 4,000 men died.

And many of these unfortunately were the Welsh soldiers from the 38th division.

Now, what is even more unfortunate is that some people attribute these casualties to the really poor commandment from the British generals who apparently and allegedly instructed the Welsh men to walk towards the lines of machine guns.

And that is unfortunately how many of them met their deaths.

And even now we can still see remnants of the bloodshed that occurred across these five days because the land in France is still physically marked by the violence.

So the land itself is scarred by the extreme and brutal violence that you know both sides witnessed in that battle on that day in July, 1916.

So this was an extremely violent and brutal battle, particularly for the 38th division of Welsh soldiers.

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

True or false? The Battle of the Somme was a successful mission for Britain.

I'm going to invite you to pause the video while you decide whether you think that is in fact true or false.

So pause the video and off you go now.

And well done if you selected false.

What I'd like you to do now is justify why that is not true using one of the two justifications below.

So is that false, because though the British Army drove the German soldiers out, they suffered greatly and many lives were lost? Or is it false because the Battle of Mametz Wood was won by the Germans and the British Army lost many of its soldiers? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you decide which of those reasons is the correct one for that statement being false.

Off you go.

Fantastic and really well done if you correctly selected A.

As we've learned, even though the British army actually won that battle and drove the German soldiers out, the consequence of that was an immense loss of life.

And so well done if you remembered that.

So let's move on to the first task of the lesson.

And I'd like you to imagine that it is now 1916.

Imagine that you are a journalist reporting on the events in France in 1916, so the Battle of Mametz Wood.

I would like you to write me a newspaper headline which summarises the events of the Battle of Mametz Wood in 1916.

Now, just as a little bit of a hint and a help, your headline should follow this format.

So here's an example headline.

"Wasted lives: Welsh soldiers instructed to walk towards wall of machine guns in Britain's next move for recapture of some territory." Now, in a good headline, you can have an eye catching and attention grabbing summary of what the article is about.

And you'll notice here that I've kind of reused one of the words from the poem, which is, "wasted" to describe the loss of life here.

So that is quite useful as it links directly with the poem.

Now, secondly, you can put a colon in so that you can have that opportunity to expand on what you've expressed in the first eye-catching summary.

So that "Wasted lives:", we're about to give more information now.

So here we're going to provide more details about the very specific events of what's gone on.

So thinking about who, what, where, and why.

Now, you don't need to answer all of those questions in the summary, but those are just some of the things that you might want to consider when you are adding detail about the specific events that took place on those days.

So what I'm going to invite you to do now is pause the video while you have a go at writing, a really impactful but also informative headline that adequately summarises the events of the Battle of Mametz Wood in 1916.

So I'm gonna invite you now to pause the video while you have a go at that task now.

Fantastic headlines.

Really well done.

So as a form of feedback, I thought it'd be really nice for you to share your headlines with a partner and then to reflect on the task by discussing the following question.

What information did you include in your headline and why did you think that that was the most important information here? Now, if you don't have a partner, that's absolutely fine.

You can still participate in this task.

You can reflect independently thinking, well, still why did I choose the information that I chose? Why was that the most important information, and why did that need to go in the headline versus some of the other information that I've learned this lesson? So what I'm going to invite you to do now is pause the video while you share your headline with a partner and/or reflect on the task by discussing the questions on screen now.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your headlines, so off you go to discuss those now.

Fantastic discussions and a really diverse range of headlines with different information included, but what everybody included, which was really positive to see as this is the key information is the incredible loss of life in terms of from the British Army and those Welsh soldiers of that in that 38th division.

So really well done because that was a really important information that you needed to take from this part of the lesson.

So now that we've understood the context and what influenced the writing of this poem, let's have a read of the poem and see how that context manifests in the themes of the poem.

So for this part of the lesson, you will need your anthology in front of you and you will need it open at the poem, "Mametz Wood" because you are going to read through the poem in full.

Once you have done that, we are then going to discuss some key ideas and moments in more detail from the poem.

So what I'd like you to do now is pause the video while you read the poem through in full.

I would massively recommend that you read the poem out loud as poetry is designed to be read out loud, paying particular attention to the poet's use of punctuation.

So make sure that when you are reading it, you are reading it at a pace that is comfortable to you, where you can really hear each individual word and that you are, as I said, paying really close attention to the use of punctuation as this informs your pace and your tone as you are reading.

So as I said, I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you read through the poem in full before we come back together to discuss some key ideas and moments.

So pause the video and off you go to read the poem.

I hope you enjoy it.

Fantastic reading and really well done.

Great to see many of you actually reading the poem through twice because it's really important to read a poem multiple times to really gauge an understanding of what's happening in that poem.

So well done there.

Now, when you read a poem for the first time, it can be really useful to ask yourself questions that inform your understanding of the poem or help you to understand the poem further.

So the questions I'd like you to ask yourself now, having read the poem is, well first of all, what were your first impressions of the poem? Did you like it? Why or why not? I'd like you to consider how the poem made you feel and why, and finally how the poem linked to the context that we explored earlier.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video again while you consider the three questions and ideally discuss them with the people around you.

If you don't have a discussion partner, you can just jot some ideas down independently.

Pause the video and consider those initial questions now.

Fantastic, and it was lovely to hear so many of you saying that you really enjoyed this poem and you know it made you feel quite sad, it made you feel really angry, and that's brilliant because that shows me that you've had a really personal response to this poem, which is exactly what we are looking for the first time that we read one.

So really well done there and brilliant discussions.

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

True or false? The poem retells the story of the Battle of Mametz Wood.

Is that true or false? You decide, pause the video and make your decision now.

Fantastic and congratulations if you correctly identified it is in fact false.

What I'd like you to do now is the difficult part and justify why that statement is in fact false using one of the two justifications below.

I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you read both justifications and decide which you think is the correct reason for that statement being false.

Off you go.

Fantastic work and really well done if you correctly identified that.

In fact, the poem tells the story of farmers digging up the bones of soldiers who died in the battle.

The poem mostly describes the remains of the soldiers and revisits questions about how and why they died.

So a massive well done if you correctly selected A.

You are absolutely right.

Really well done.

So I'd like you to discuss now, well, what did we learn earlier in the lesson about the Battle of Mametz Wood? So I'd like you to tell me the key events that we learned about the Battle of Mametz Wood.

Again, you can do this as a discussion task or you can think about it independently, whichever you would prefer.

But I'd like you now to pause the video while you go off to consider that question now.

Fantastic discussions and it was great to see how much you've already remembered from the beginning of the lesson.

So what I'd like you to do now is track through the poem by finding a line that shows the following information or facts about the Battle of Mametz Wood that we learned earlier in the lesson.

So where do we see in the poem this idea that many of the Welsh soldiers were extremely young and inexperienced? Where do we see the fact that some people attribute these casualties to the poor commands from the British generals? Where do we see the idea that the wood was strongly defended and fortified by the Germans? And finally, where do we see the idea that the land is still marked by the violence? So those were all of the things that we learned about the Battle of Mametz Wood, and now we're looking for evidence of these facts in the poem.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you find the corresponding line that exemplifies each of these facts about the Battle of Mametz Wood.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

So pause the video and off you go to find those lines now.

A massive well done and really excellent work if you selected line 16 from the poem, which really well exemplifies that many of the Welsh soldiers were very young and inexperienced.

Now, line 8 is a really crucial line in the suggestion that actually some people blame the casualties on the poor commands from British generals.

Okay, and that is kind of a very key theme of the poem.

It's this question of blame and this question of who wasted the lives of those soldiers.

Now, line 9 is a great line for showing how fortified the wood was by the Germans and therefore, how dangerous this battle was.

And finally, line 11 is a brilliant line for exemplifying just how brutal and violent this particular conflict was because the land is still very much marked and scarred by the violence that was witnessed on those five days in July, 1916.

So really well done if you chose any of those lines.

There were more lines, so don't worry if you didn't get exactly the same ones.

But there are just some suggestions of lines that exemplify the key facts from the Battle of Mametz Wood.

So onto our last task of lesson now, where again, I'd like you to reread the poem and you might be thinking, "Oh, not again, I don't wanna read it again." But it is super, super important that every time you look back at the poem, you reread it in full because every single time you read it, you will pick up things that you didn't pick up the first or the second or the third or the 50th time that you read it.

So it's really important to keep rereading that poem and keep enhancing your own understanding of it.

So yes, I would like you to reread the poem again.

That is really important.

Once you have reread it, for each stanza, I would like you to write me one summary sentence that explains what happens in or what we learnt from that stanza about the Battle of Mametz Wood or the soldiers that Owen is memorialising.

So one example has been done for you here.

So for example, in stanza 1, we learn that years after the Battle of Mametz Wood, local farmers are still finding remains of the young soldiers when they plough their land.

So there is a really concise summary of what stanza 1 is about and what we learn from stanza 1 about the Battle of Mametz Wood.

So what I'd like you to do now is complete the same activity for stanzas 2 to 7.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you have a go at writing those summary sentences now.

Fantastic effort.

I'm really impressed with kind of how concise those summaries were and how carefully you were thinking about the really key information that needed to be included in those summaries.

So really well done.

I'm going to show you my summaries now, and I'd like you to compare yours to mine and use my summaries to make any amendments or any improvements that you feel will be useful for your notes.

So remember again, we've already gone through stanza 1 where we learned that years after the Battle of Mametz Wood, those local farmers are still finding the remains of young soldiers when they plough their land.

Now, in stanza 2, you might have written that we learned that the men's bodies have been found in bits, which shows us just how destructive this battle was because they were not found in one piece.

In stanza 3, the poet recounts how the men were told to walk towards the nesting machine guns, which unfortunately ultimately led to their mass slaughter.

In stanza 4, the poet explains that even years later, the earth still bears the scars of that fateful battle, which shows us the level of violence that took place and the impact that that has had, not only on humans, but also nature.

In stanza 5, the poet informs us that earlier that very same morning, 20 young men had been dug up all buried together with their arms linked.

In stanza 6, we learned that the skeleton's heads are tilted back and that the dead men are still wearing the boots that they wore all those years ago, which have ironically outlived them.

And finally, in stanza 7, the poet imagines the men singing when they were alive and feels really sad at the thought of their voices and stories being lost for so many years until now.

So there are the stanza summaries.

Really important sometimes to summarise the poem, just to give you a really basic understanding of what actually happens in the poem before you can start to analyse how the poet conveys their message or their story.

So what I'd like you to discuss now is, well, why do you think that Sheers' actually wrote this poem? What maybe was he trying to achieve in writing this poem? And remember, one of the really key contextual factors that we learned about Sheers was that he was himself Welsh as well.

So there's a little hint and tip for you.

So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you discuss again with people around you or think independently about why Sheers may have written this poem.

Pause the video, and off you go.

Fantastic discussions.

And really well done.

Now, Sheers might have written this poem to show us the destructive and futile nature of war.

He also might have written the poem as he himself was Welsh and perhaps felt that the 38th division, which was comprised of mostly Welsh soldiers, has not been given the glory and the recognition that it deserves.

So perhaps he's written this poem as a form of memorial for those Welsh soldiers because he feels that it's a real shame that their role in this battle hasn't been fully acknowledged or appreciated.

So really well done if either of those ideas were shared during your discussions.

Very insightful and perceptive and a brilliant understanding of the poem there.

So well done.

So to summarise the learning from today, well, remember that "Mametz Wood", the poem was actually inspired by the real events of the Battle of Mametz Wood in 1916.

In the poem, Sheers tells the story of the discovery of the bodies of 20 young men, all of whom were slaughtered in battle.

Over 4,000 men died in the Battle of Mametz Wood and some people attribute these deaths to poor tactical decisions made by commanders, British commanders.

Furthermore, the poem conveys how devastating, destructive, and futile war is.

And finally, the poet illustrates that war affects not only people, but nature too, because land has been scarred by the violence it witnessed all those years back in 1916.

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

It's been more than a pleasure to teach you, and I hope you found the context really interesting and the poem very impactful and thought provoking as well.

I massively look forward to seeing you next time.

So thank you for your engagement and contributions and I will see you for another poem, I'm sure in the future.

Have a lovely rest of your day and I'll see you later.