Hello there and welcome to today's lesson.

My name's Ms. Keller, and in this session we're going to be reading and understanding Owen Sheers' poem, "Winter Swans." So let's get started.

So by the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to explain how Sheers presents a change in the speaker's relationship.

Here are today's keywords.

We have fragmented, unified, hope, despair, and salvageable.

So let's have a look at what these words mean.

Fragmented is when something is broken into pieces.

It lacks togetherness or unity, which leads us nicely onto that second word, unified, which means that the opposite of fragmented.

Something is formed or integrated into a whole.

So different parts have been combined and it's cohesive.

Hope is an optimistic expectation or a longing for a positive outcome.

And again, we have despair is the opposite, the antonym of hope, because it means overwhelming sadness, a loss of hope.

And last of all, salvageable, which means that something can be saved or repaired.

How is today's lesson going to look? Well, we are going to do two main things in order to understand this poem.

We're going to start by thinking about our initial impressions of the text and we're going to explore the wider context.

And then we're going to look at how the poet uses form and structure.

So I'd like to start by making some initial predictions about what you think will happen in the poem just based on the title, "Winter Swans." I'd like you to discuss this in pairs or in small groups or if you're working on your own, that's okay.

Perhaps just make some notes on your paper or in your exercise book about the impressions that you are getting from this title, "Winter Swans." And in particular, I would like you to think about two key questions.

Firstly, what do you associate with the word winter? And then secondly, what do you associate with swans? Take a few minutes to discuss.

Pause the video here, and then when you are ready to continue, click play and we'll feed back some responses.

Okay, welcome back.

Some absolutely fantastic discussions taking place there, so well done.

I'd just like to pull out a few great responses that I overheard.

So well done, if you are picking up on this idea of winter as cold and perhaps a bleak time.

A lot of people associated it with a quietness and a silence and perhaps a loneliness since winter is the time when nature begins to hibernate and sleep and a lot of our plants begin to die off before they are reborn next year.

So I really like that idea of winter as a time where things wind down, it's quiet.

And this was really interesting because when we thought of the idea of swans, somebody interestingly picked up on this idea that swans are quite silent creatures.

Yes, they can make a noise, but when we imagine a swan, a lot of people were suggesting this idea of having that image of swans moving silently and gracefully across a lake or a river.

Also, a lot of people were picking up on this idea that both winter and swans are things we both associate with the colour white.

So it'll be interesting to see if when we read the poem that this idea of that colour imagery of white or of the idea of perhaps silence is something that comes through in the text.

Take some time to read the poem carefully and once you've done that, I would like you to discuss the following questions.

Who are the characters in the poem? Where are they? What happens to them and how do they feel? So pause the video here.

Take as much time as you need to read and have a good discussion or make some notes in your exercise book or on your paper.

And when you are ready to continue, click play.

Okay, welcome back.

I hope you all had a good chance to read through that poem and think really carefully about what your initial impressions are of the text.

So let's just discuss the answers to these questions.

So starting with who are the characters in the poem? Well done if you managed to pick up on the idea that the poem focused on a couple.

We have the speaker of the poem and somebody else.

And a great way that we can pick up on that idea is there in line three, the use of the first person plural pronoun, we.

We've got the thoughts and ideas of the person who is speaking, I and then somebody else that is with them, so together they are we.

So where are they? Well, they are walking around a lake and we discover that in line six in the quote, "skirted the lake." They're walking around the edge of a lake together.

And what happens to them while they're here? Well, they stop and look at some swans.

And in line seven, the poet tells us the swans came and how do they feel? This is very, very important When we study a poem.

What are the feelings? What is the mood of the poem? Well, the poem begins with despair, that shift to hope as the text progresses.

So let's look at that last response in a little bit more detail.

How could we evidence this idea, this shift from despair to hope? Let's have a look at some key quotations starting with lines one to three.

"The clouds have given their all.

Two days of rain and then a break in which we walked." The use of pathetic fallacy here implies That the couple may have argued.

So pathetic fallacy is a great language technique that writers often use whereby they draw links between natural descriptions and the natural landscape and the emotions that are felt by the characters in their text or perhaps the emotional mood that they would like to create.

So here Sheers is using pathetic fallacy in that line, "two days of rain and then a break," which could arguably symbolise the fact that the couple have been arguing there has been sadness, two days of tears, rain, and now they're experiencing a break from that conflict.

So it's likely for us to assume that at this point in the beginning of the poem, they may be feeling anger or despair.

So as the poem progresses, "we skirted a lake, silent and apart." This silent and apart, these two adjectives suggest to us that their relationship is fragmented.

They're not talking and they're not walking along together.

They are separate, detached, and apart.

So after this point, they stop to look at the swans and this experience gives them hope that their relationship is salvageable.

So as the poem progresses, they stop to look at the swans and this experience gives them hope that their relationship is salvageable.

So in line seven and eight, the poet says, "the swans came and stopped us with the show of tipping in unison." And this word unison shows that the couple are moved by this idea that the swans are unified, they are a pair.

And then in line 13, "'They mate for life,' you said." And it seems as though the togetherness of the swans is the very thing that makes the speaker's partner reflect on their own fragmented relationship.

And then in lines 17 to 20, the swans have moved away from the couple and they're once again alone.

And the speaker describes how, "I noticed our hands that had somehow swum the distance between us and folded one over another like a pair of wings settling after flight." And it seems here that the experience of seeing the swans has brought the couple together.

Since the poet uses language such as swam the distance, their hands have moved across this distance where they were once apart and they are now folded one over another, they're holding hands.

So let's pause here and check our understanding of what happens in the poem.

So as the poem progresses, the mood of the poem shifts from despair to jealousy, contentment or hope.

Pause the video while you have a think and then when you are ready to find out the answer, click play and we'll carry on.

Well done to those of you that said c, hope.

The mood of the poem shifts from despair to hope.

And remember that these two words are opposite, they're antonyms. Despair is when something is hopeless.

And if something has hope, then people no longer feel despair.

So now let's explore the wider context of this poem.

"Winter Swans" was part of Sheers' collection entitled "Skirrid Hill" named after a mountain in Wales.

And in English, this name Skirrid Hill translates as shattered mountain, which is very interesting to think about when we consider that our couple in this poem have that fragmented relationship.

Fragmented is another word for shattered.

Things are broken apart.

And this poetry collection deals with themes of separation and shows lots of different examples of fragmented relationships.

So let's just pause again and check our understanding of the wider context.

In English, the name Skirrid Hill translates as rigid mountain, shattered mountain or lonely mountain.

Pause for a moment while you have a think and then click play when you'd like to carry on.

Okay, well done to those of you that said B.

The name Skirrid Hill translates as Shattered Mountain.

So let's stop here for a moment and practise using the knowledge that we've acquired so far.

I'd like you to write about the wider context of "Winter Swans," thinking specifically about how it links to what we know happens in the poem.

And I'd like you to challenge yourself to use tentative language.

So why do we use tentative language? Well, we use it because we can't know for certain what inspired Sheers' to write this poem or why he makes the language choices that he does.

We can only make educated guesses, inferences.

We can only interpret why we think he made the language choices that he did.

And we can back that up with evidence, but we'll never know for sure if that's why he did it.

So how do we use tentative language? Well, we could use verbs such as could, may, suggest or indicate or adverbs such as perhaps, maybe, arguably, possibly, likely.

And if we look at the words in this box, we could see that what they all have in common is they're hinting towards an idea.

They're putting it out there, but they're not certain that this is the only one right answer.

It's a suggestion, an indication.

Okay, so if you'd like to challenge yourself and go on ahead, then feel free to start writing now.

Pause the video and we'll feed back some responses when you are ready to click play.

Or if you're not quite sure where to start and you'd like a bit of extra support, then feel free to use these sentence starters.

Pause the video here and then click play when you're ready to carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

A fantastic effort there from everybody trying to explain this contextual knowledge.

I was particularly impressed to see the different ways that people were linking what they knew about the context of the poem to specific key quotes from the text.

So let's have a look at this example response.

As we are reading, compare this answer to what you've written.

"Winter Swans" appeared in a collection entitled "Skirrid Hill." This name means shattered mountain, which could suggest that the poet wanted to reflect on separation and fragmented relationships.

Even though it is not explicitly confirmed in the poem, it's likely the speaker and their partner are in a fragmented relationship and they may break up.

Sheers implies this in his description of them as silent and apart.

Furthermore, the use of pathetic fallacy in the second line, "two days of rain" suggests they've been feeling sadness or anger towards each other.

So let's have a look at what's particularly good about this response.

It's effective because it combines contextual knowledge such as this idea that the collection was called "Skirrid Hill," and the fact that that means shattered mountain and the fact that we know that this collection reflects on fragmented or shattered relationships.

It includes lots of tentative language, such as suggest, likely, implies, and of course evidence from the poem.

And down the bottom there, we've got those two different quotations, "silent and apart" and "two days of rain." So take a moment to have a look at your own answer.

Did you include contextual knowledge, tentative language and evidence from the poem? If you did, fantastic.

If not, don't worry, it's only a first attempt, but just take a few minutes to add anything you are missing.

So pause the video for a minute or two while you read your answer and add in anything you need to.

And then when you are ready to continue, press play and we'll carry on.

Fantastic.

So we have reached the halfway point.

We've looked at the poem, we now understand what it's about and we know a little bit about the wider context.

So now it is time for us to drill a little bit deeper into Sheers' structural choices.

So form and structure play a really important role in how we interpret any poem.

I'd like you to take a minute to think really carefully about form and structure and discuss in pairs or in small groups or make some notes if you're working on your own, thinking about what the difference is between the form and structure of a poem.

Take two minutes to discuss this, press pause and then press play when you are ready to feedback.

Okay, lots of fantastic discussions taking place there.

I could hear people really discussing and debating this difference.

And I asked you this question for a reason.

Form and structure are sometimes quite difficult to separate because they both deal with things that exist outside the individual words and phrases.

They're both concerned with this idea of how those words and phrases have been put together.

And actually is a really common misconception when people analyse poetry that they get form and structure mixed up.

So let's just make sure we know which is which.

So well done if you picked up on this idea that form is set of poetic rules.

They're the different things that a poem does that helps us to determine what type of poem it is.

Is it a sonic perhaps or a limerick or a nursery rhyme or a ballad? And the way that we can work that out is by looking carefully at things such as the lengths of lines, if the poem has a rhyme scheme, the metre, which is the rhythm and the pace of the poem and the stanza length.

So now let's have a look at structure.

Structure deals with how the poem is organised and laid out on the page.

So how do we analyse structure? Well, we could think about how a poem uses line breaks.

So where do they occur in the poem? Do they use any examples of repetition? And where do they do that? Is it to create a specific effect? Do they use enjambment, which is when we see punctuation in the middle of a line of poetry? And again, more widely, how are they using punctuation in general or are they not using any at all? And why do we think that might be? And last of all, the order of the ideas.

What does each part of the poem focus on and how does that focus shift as the poem progresses? So let's check our understanding of form and structure.

True or false, when analysing the structure of a poem, you could discuss the lengths of lines and stanzas? Have a think, decide which you think it is.

Click pause and have a think, and then when you are ready to find out the answer, click play and we'll carry on.

So well done to those of you that said false.

If you are discussing the lengths of lines and standards, you are discussing the poem's form.

So how can we justify this answer? Pause the video, have a read of these two explanations and decide which one you think best justifies your answer.

And then when you are ready to continue, click play.

The correct answer was b.

These are elements of poetic form which deals with the poetic rules that determine the type of poem.

So let's have a look at how Sheers uses form and structure in "Winter Swans." In this poem, the form and structure mimic the emotional shift of the poem from fragmented despair to unified hope.

Let's start by thinking about the form.

So the poem is organised into six tercets.

A tercet is a three line stanza.

And then at the end there is a couplet, which is two lines together.

It's written in free verse, which means that there's no rhyme or regular rhythm except for the couplet at the end.

And it's organised into short, snappy stanzas with a lack of irregular pattern or routine which could actually symbolise the turbulent, fragmented nature of the couple's relationship.

And now let's think about the structure.

So stanza one to four describe the troubles the couple are experiencing and they set the scene using descriptions of the turbulent weather.

So we've got that idea of turbulence again.

Things are not smooth sailing and we can see that if we look at the beginning and the end of this block of stanzas.

So the first line begins, "the clouds had given their all," and the last line of stanza four ends, "like boats righting in rough weather." So in both cases we've got links there to that turbulent weather.

At the beginning, "the clouds had given their all," which suggests there's been lots of rain or perhaps a storm.

And then there at the end of standard four, "like boats righting in rough weather," which has given us that image of boats bobbing around again perhaps in stormy weather.

So then as the poem progresses, in stanza's five to seven, we see a shift and Sheers uses lots of calm images which could symbolise the healing that the couple experience as they become unified again and start to view their relationship as salvageable.

And stanza five begins, "they mate for life." So it begins with that realisation from the speaker's partner that swans have this unity that perhaps the couple don't have at this point.

And then the very last line of the poem, "like a pair of wings settling after flight." So the couple's hands have joined together.

As they walk away from the swans, they're holding hands like a pair of wings settling after flight.

And we can think about that idea that the hands are being described like a pair of wings.

The couple have almost become unified like the swans.

Let's just zoom in on line 14 because it's an example of what is known as volta, a turning point.

A point in a poem where we notice a shift from one mood to another.

So in line 14, the speaker describes the swans moving across the water as porcelain over stilling water, giving us this lovely impression of smooth white swans calmly and quietly travelling across the water.

So this is our first shift from that turbulent weather that we have been reading about at the beginning of the poem.

And now let's think about the end.

So in the final stanza, the form changes from these tercets, the three line stanzas to a two line stanza, a couplet and folded one over the other like a pair of wings settling after flight.

So here we've got lots of references linked to pairs and couples showing how the couple are united.

We've got words such as "one over the other" like a pair, wings, which we know again come in pairs.

And even more interestingly, the idea that this last line is itself a couple, it's made up of two lines which makes it stand out from the rest of the poem.

However, the use of the present tense here in the word settling could suggest that this perhaps is only the beginning of their healing journey.

They haven't settled, they're in the process of settling.

So yes, they have come together, they are a unified couple, but they still have some work to do on their relationship.

Okay, so let's pause here and check our knowledge of how Sheers uses form and structure.

In line 14 of the poem, the speaker's description of the swans as porcelain over stilling water is an example of what.

Is it tercet, a volta or a simile? Pause the video here and then click play when you are ready to reveal the answer.

It is an example of a volta because this is the line where the mood shifts from that despair at the beginning symbolised by that turbulent weather into these tranquil images that perhaps symbolise that there is hope that the couple's relationship can be salvaged.

So let's have a look at this grid.

On the left we have got the initial idea.

This is our topic sentence, our starting inference.

And then in the middle, we have supporting evidence.

So this is how we're gonna back up that initial idea with a reference to the text or a quotation.

And then on the right we have the development of ideas.

So this is thinking about what that use of language or form or structure suggests, what it implies, what message is the poet trying to convey with this particular choice they've made? So if you will see, I have filled in different boxes.

So it's a bit of a puzzle where you might need to work backwards from the supporting evidence to think about what that inference is and how you're going to develop that idea.

Or in the middle row, you've got that initial idea and it's up to you to support it with some evidence and then develop it.

And then down the bottom there, you've got your quotation and you'll need to have a think about your initial idea and again, how you might be developing it.

So pause the video, take as much time as you need to complete this grid in as much detail as you can and then when you are ready to feedback your responses, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at how we could have completed the grid.

Remember that when we are studying English literature, there isn't always one right answer, but in fact there are lots of ways that we could interpret literary text.

So don't worry if your answer isn't exactly what you see here, as long as you are making sure that you are including that initial idea or inference, then some relevant supporting evidence, and then you are developing your ideas, taking us through how your initial idea and supporting evidence can be brought together, then it's likely that your answer is valid.

So let's look at this top row then.

We have the supporting evidence of there is no rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern.

So an example of an initial idea that we could have used here is Sheers uses free verse to suggest the couple's relationship is turbulent.

And then over in the development of ideas, the lack of rhythm or routine implies that the relationship is unsettled.

And if we look at all three boxes together now, we can see the journey of that analytical idea because over on the left, the inference is that the couple's relationship is turbulent.

And then over on the right, the lack of rhythm or routine implies that the relationship is unsettled.

It's exactly that supporting evidence that we can use to prove that the relationship is unsettled and turbulent.

Okay, onto the middle row, Sheers' use of a volta could signify a turning point for the couple.

Let's have a look at the supporting evidence.

Porcelain over the stilling water there on line 14, and how could we have developed this idea? We could have said the tranquil image could signify a period of calm for the couple.

Okay, and onto that final row.

So the evidence we had was, "and folded one over the other, like a pair of wings settling after flight." And then on the left, in the initial ideas box, we could have said the final stanza is a couplet perhaps indicating a return to regularity.

Because at this point in the poem, we are moving away from those tercets into only two lines, a couplet.

And then in the development of ideas box, we could have said the language and structure implies that couple are united again, because we've got that idea of one over the other, a pair, these words that are related to the idea of couples and obviously the use of that two line stanza, a couplet.

So have a look at these responses and take some time to compare it to what you have written.

Thinking carefully about your use of tentative language, did you remember to include those important tentative verbs and adverbs such as suggests, implies, could, perhaps? If not, that's okay.

Don't worry.

There'll be time for you to add some in now.

So pause the video, take a few moments to read through your work and compare it to the model answers that you can see here.

And if you need to, add in some examples of that tentative language or if you've managed to use lots of tentative language already, then well done, and take a moment to circle or underline the examples that you have used.

So pause the video here and then when you are ready to continue, click play.

Okay, so we've made it to the end of the lesson.

So can I just start by saying a massive well done for making it this far.

Hopefully you feel a bit more confident about what happens in the poem, "Winter Swans," the wider context and how form and structure are used in the text.

So let's just summarise what we've covered today.

This poem is about a couple who are inspired to salvage their relationship after stopping to look at swans in a lake.

The mood of the poem shifts from despair to hope.

It's taken from a collection entitled "Skirrid Hill," which means shattered mountain.

This collection deals with themes of separation and it picks examples of fragmented relationships.

And Sheers uses form and structure to show how the couple shift from a fragmented to a unified relationship.

Once again, thank you so much for joining me in this lesson, and I hope to see you again soon.

Have a great day.