Lesson video

Hi there, everyone, and welcome to the first lesson of our brand new unit.

I'm so excited for this unit because I love narrative writing, and I also absolutely love the poem that our writing is going to be based on.

I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you.

So let's go ahead and get started.

In today's lesson, you will be able to understand the historical, geographical, social and authorial context of "The Highwayman".

Here are some of the keywords we're going to be using: narrative poem, context, 18th century, welfare state, synopsis.

Well done, everyone.

A narrative poem is a type of poem that tells a story.

Context is the factors outside a text that influence it, such as the historical period, setting and society at the time.

The historical time period from 1701 to 1800 is known as the 18th century.

The welfare state is government support for people, such as social care and health services.

A synopsis is a summary of a text.

In our lesson today, we are going to be understanding the context of "The Highwayman".

Firstly, we're going to learn about the context of "The Highwayman", and then we are going to learn a synopsis or a summary of "The Highwayman" poem to give us a bit of an idea of what it will be about.

So let's get started with learning about the context of "The Highwayman".

"The Highwayman" is a narrative poem set in the 18th century, which was between 1701 and 1800.

It was set in rural England.

So just for our own understanding, the 18th century occurred around 200 years ago.

Some historical features of this time are really important.

Remember, for us to fully understand a text, it's really helpful for us to understand what the time period that it was set in was like, what life was like for people at that time, what society was like, and where in the world the story or the poem or the text itself was set.

So at this time in England, Queen Anne became the monarch.

That means she was the queen, Great Britain was formed.

So England, Scotland, and Wales were joined together to form Great Britain in the 18th century.

That's a huge moment in British history.

The first ever Prime Minister occupied Downing Street, and the Industrial Revolution happened.

Now, if you're really interested in learning a little bit more about this time period, you could go off and do your own research project, perhaps, about what life was like in the 18th century, beyond what we do today.

But in the Industrial Revolution, just a quick sort of summary of what happened here, is when lots of industry, like factories were built in London.

This created lots of jobs, lots of industry.

It meant that in England there was this hub of production and things being made, but it also led to quite poor, in fact, very poor living conditions because we had these huge, big factories in the middle of the city, which caused a huge amount of pollution and smoke and unsanitary conditions for people living in that area.

Which of these were features of the 18th century? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that the Industrial Revolution happened in the 18th century, so did Queen Anne's reign and the formation of Great Britain.

World War II didn't happen until 1939.

"The Highwayman" is a narrative poem set in the 18th century between 1701 and 1800.

Let's look at this period on a timeline.

So we start off with the 18th century, which is a span of 99 years, and this is where "The Highwayman" poem was set.

37 years later, we move on to 1837.

Now, lots of us might know this time period very well as the Victorian era.

This is when Queen Victoria was the monarch.

So "The Highwayman" was written a few years after the end of the Victorian period.

So we've got to get that into our head.

"The Highwayman" poem was written in the 1900s, but set in the 1800s.

If you've done some of our other units, such as the Titanic, you'll recognise the Titanic was built in 1912.

Following on from that, we had World War I and World War II.

After World War II, the National Health Service was set up.

So here are a few key events in history for us, that we already maybe know about, that really helps us understand when poem was written and when it was set.

They're two different things.

This helps us understand a little bit more about just how long ago this poem was written and when it was set, and how different life in England was at that time.

Pre-health service, pre-World Wars I and II, pre the Titanic.

The poem itself was actually set before even Queen Victoria was on the throne.

So life was very, very different.

In the 18th century the gap between rich or very wealthy people and very poor people was very, very pronounced.

It means they had extremely different experiences of life.

There was no welfare state to support the poor.

So as we just saw in that timeline, the NHS wasn't set up until after World War II.

The NHS is a huge part of the UK's welfare state because everybody pays taxes, and that means if they need medical support, they can go to a hospital and they don't have to pay for it.

That didn't exist before the NHS was established.

So in the 1800s, if somebody was very poor, nobody, they wouldn't be able to afford to go and see a doctor if they were sick.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.

Firstly, let's learn a little bit more about what life was like for very wealthy people.

A very, very small percentage of the population were wealthy.

So only a few families were very, very wealthy, that means rich, and they lived in lavish houses, so really big, beautiful houses with paid staff.

So they might have cooks, they might have maids, they might even pay a governess or a nanny to come and look after the children and teach them at home.

Here's a painting of a wealthy family in the 18th century.

This gives us a little bit of an insight into what their homes were like.

So we can see these ornate paintings on the wall, these very high ceilings, this beautiful patterned wallpaper, and the carpets as well, these big lavish rugs that look really detailed, huge, I can imagine they cost a lot of money to have at the time.

And then if we look at the people themselves and how they are dressed.

So they owned pets, I can see some dogs in this picture.

The men and the women are very, very formally dressed.

So in these beautiful, silky, expensive-looking dresses and suits, this is a representation of maybe a social gathering or a dinner dance, or a party that the very wealthy elite members of society would've regularly been doing.

School in the 18th century was not compulsory.

That means children didn't have to go to school by law, but many wealthy families paid for their children to be educated.

So there was no such thing as free school, only if you paid for it.

So we can see there how that gap between the wealthy people and the poor people remained, because if you were poor, you couldn't afford to send your children to school and pay for a teacher.

So it meant that poor children weren't able to get an education and then get a good job and a good career and make money.

Really, it was only the wealthy children who got the education and the good jobs and the careers, and then made their own money.

On the other hand, many people lived in poverty.

So a very small number of people lived wealthy, rich lifestyles, and lots of people lived in poverty.

That means that they were very poor.

Often entire families would live in one room and many poor children did not attend school.

Disease was very common, and many people died from malnutrition.

That means not having nutritious food for their bodies to remain healthy and be able to thrive and survive.

They often also got sick and died from drinking dirty water.

So now if we want to have a drink of water, we can go to a tap and turn the tap on and have clean drinking water.

But these sorts of systems didn't exist in the 18th century.

So they also had unclean food.

So if you imagine if you've ever got sick from something you've eaten because maybe it's gone off or it's not been clean, this was a very real reality for many people who lived in poverty during the 18th century, all the time, because they didn't have fridges or freezers in their house to keep their food fresh.

It was actually very hard to keep food fresh and healthy enough, and clean enough to eat safely.

So they lived in very unsanitary conditions.

There was no sewage system.

So if people went to the toilet, it ended up getting thrown out into the street.

So can you imagine what the streets would have smelled like and the amount of disease and germs out in the streets at the time? The National Health Service or the NHS hadn't yet been formed, so poor people couldn't receive the medical care they needed.

If you were a rich person and you became sick, you could pay for a doctor to come and see you and look after you and treat you and make you better again.

If you were poor, you didn't have that luxury.

So there were lots of things in society at the time that kept the rich people rich and living longer and having good standards of living, and the poor people would die younger because they had less positive living standards.

Children didn't go to school, so they didn't have social mobility, which means that they weren't able to get an education then get a job that would bring them out of a life of poverty.

So often, the rich remained very rich, and the poor remained very poor because society was not set up at the time to support people who had less money.

True or false? 18th century England featured a welfare state.

Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted it.

This is false.

Now pause the video while you decide how to justify your answer.

Well done.

The welfare state that included the formation of the NHS was established after World War II.

It was not established before the 18th century.

"The Highwayman" is set on a moor in rural England.

Here's a picture of a moor.

A moor is just a big, vast, expanse of land that hasn't been cultivated.

It's been allowed to sort of grow wildly.

It's an amazing area for wildlife and plants to grow and to thrive.

There's not much human activity on a moor, so you wouldn't see lots of shops, lots of houses, lots of man-made buildings.

You might see the odd little inn or a pub, but not much.

So they wouldn't be very populated or busy with people.

Highwaymen were robbers who attacked and stole from travellers as they journeyed across the isolated rural paths on England's moors.

So a highwayman was a person who would be out on the moor and they would keep an eye out and watch for people travelling maybe on foot or on horseback and with carriages, and they would go and attack them.

So they might have weapons to threaten people with.

They would steal their things or their money and then run away or ride off on horseback with the things they've stolen.

They often travelled on horseback because it's much faster to travel on a horse that can gallop really quickly than to run away on foot.

Our poem is about a highwayman, which you've probably guessed because the title of the poem is "The Highwayman".

Referring to what we've found out so far, what do you want to find out about life in 18th century England? What questions would you like to find out the answers to? Write down three questions.

These could be linked to any of these ideas, so you could use these as inspiration to raise your questions.

So any historical events, education in the 18th century, wealth, poverty, or highwaymen, you could use some of these scaffolds to get you started.

So why? How? What? Can? Where? Are there? Pause the video now while you complete your task.

Great work, everyone.

So, three questions you would like to find the answers to about the 18th century.

Here are some that I thought might be raised, but remember, mine will be different to what you've got.

So maybe you might have asked a question such as, "What was life like in the 18th century England?" "What did children do if they didn't go to school?" "What did a poor or a wealthy family's home look like?" "What was the Industrial Revolution and how did it change life in England?" "What was government like during the 18th century?" Perhaps you could research some of the answers to these questions to deepen your understanding of the context of the poem.

Okay, everyone, and now that brings us onto the second part of our lesson where we're going to be reading a synopsis of "The Highwayman".

"The Highwayman" was written by a British poet called Alfred Noyes.

He was alive from 1880 to 1958.

Noyes was born in Staffordshire in England, this area of England, but he moved to Wales when he was four-years-old.

He was inspired by the Welsh coast and mountains.

And when we come on to reading "The Highwayman" poem, a huge amount of the atmosphere and storytelling is linked to the setting and the ruralness and the ruggedness of the moor itself.

So we can really see that inspiration coming through in his poetry.

Noyes was a poet, a playwright, that means he wrote plays, and an author.

So he also wrote books.

In 1995, "The Highwayman" was voted the nation's 15th favourite poem, which when you consider how many poems there are out there, that is really, really impressive.

"The Highwayman" is his most well-known poem.

He wrote it when he was 24 years old, and it only took him two days to write it.

"The Highwayman", ever since has been set to music.

It inspired Julia Donaldson's book, "The Highway Rat", which is a children's book based on this poem, "The Highwayman".

"The Highwayman" is a narrative poem about a highwayman and his lover, Bess.

So there's an element of a love story to this poem.

It tells the story of the couple's love for one another, and it also has a tragic ending, but I'm not going to spoil it for you and tell you the ending already.

The setting of the poem is very powerful with strong imagery of the rural landscape.

When I say strong imagery, I mean that the language that Alfred Noyes uses throughout the poem creates very, very vivid images in the reader's mind where they can really picture the scene and imagine what is happening because he uses such powerful, descriptive language.

Now, I'm not going to even read you the poem in this lesson.

You're gonna have to wait till our next lesson to find out.

But before we finish our lesson, we are going to make some predictions about what you think happens in "The Highwayman".

There are some pictures on the screen to guide your predictions.

So our first picture is a moon at nighttime.

We can tell it's nighttime 'cause of that dark sky, but it looks like a very cloudy, moody night sky.

There's also a path running through a moor, and we know that the poem is set on a moor, a big, vast expanse of wild land.

We've then got a drawing of what looks like a man on a horse, and a woman.

Then we've got a picture of a face.

I wonder what expression you would use to describe or what word you would use to describe the face's expression.

Definitely looks like a negative expression.

Perhaps it's angry, sad, or jealous.

And finally, we've got a picture of a pistol, which is a type of gun.

Take a moment to make your predictions about what you think will happen in this narrative poem.

Remember, a narrative poem is a poem that tells a story.

You can use the sentence scaffold "I predict that:" to help you.

Pause the video while you do that.

Well done, everyone.

So here are some things that you might have predicted.

Remember, if you've got something different, that's great as well, 'cause it's your prediction.

As long as you've used the pictures to help you make an informed prediction.

So some things that you might have written might have been: I predict that the poem will be set at nighttime in a rural setting.

There will be a highwayman on horseback and a female main character.

A character in the poem will be angry or upset or jealous about something.

And the tragic ending will involve a fight or a gunfight or violence.

Well done for making your predictions.

And when we come on to reading the full poem, you'll be able to see whether your predictions were correct or not.

Well done, everyone.

And that now brings us on to the end of our lesson, where today we've been understanding the context of "The Highwayman".

In today's lesson, we've been learning that a narrative poem tells a story.

The historical, geographical, social, and authorial context of a text can influence its meaning.

Life in 18th century England was very different to modern living.

We can use our knowledge of a poem's context to make predictions about what will happen.

I really hope you've enjoyed our first lesson today on our "Highwayman" unit, and I'm already really looking forward to seeing you again.