Hello there.

Mr. Barnsley here, fantastic to see you.

Thank you so much for joining me as we continue to study some unseen poetry.

Now today we're gonna be looking at this idea of transience and how it might appear in two unseen poems, but also think about it as a concept, an idea, because it actually might appear in quite a few unseen poems that we might look at.

But we are gonna be focusing on two unseen poems. Now these poems are in your additional materials.

You're gonna want to have them in front of you.

You may wish to have read these poems before, but don't worry if you haven't.

You can read them for the first time in today's lesson as well.

All right, time for us to get started.

Let's go.

So let's have a look at today's outcome then, shall we? By the end of today's lesson, you're gonna be able to compare ideas about transience in unseen poetry.

Now there are five keywords, the first of which is transience, which you've seen in both our title and our outcome.

Now we are gonna look at this in a lot more detail than the first learning cycle, but it's this word is linked to the idea of time and the state or the fact of something only lasting for a short amount of time.

Don't worry if that's not quite clear to you.

Like I said, we will look at this in more detail very shortly.

Other words look out for is the verb to muse, and the words temporary, optimistic, and permanent.

Do pause the video and read through the definitions of each of these words if you need to.

Otherwise, let's get started.

So in our first learning cycle, we are gonna think about this concept of transience and really make sure we understand it before we move on.

And once we've understood the concept, we can start looking at it and comparing how it appears in two poems. So let's start then by making sure we understand this concept, the idea of transience.

So the idea of transience and why poets use it is quite important one for us to consider.

The reason being that this is an idea that we actually see explored in many poems. So it might be something that you might want to look out for when you're reading a poem and might want to talk about in your analysis.

And it means the state or fact of lasting only a short amount of time.

It comes from a Latin word, meaning passing over or away.

So let's try and understand this as a concept then.

Imagine you've built a snowman.

How do you think this snowman will look like the next day? All right, pause video, have a think about this.

If you've got a partner, you can discuss this with them.

Otherwise you can just think through this question independently.

But if you built a snowman, what do you expect it to look like the next day? Pause the video, have a think and press play when you've got some ideas.

Some really interesting things you were saying there.

I heard lots of you saying something similar to Izzy was saying, well most of the time I would expect the snowman to have melted away, particularly in the climate in the UK.

We might not expect the really cold weather to last long enough and the snowman would start to melt away.

Maybe in some other much colder countries you might be able to create a snowman that might last a little bit longer, but in the UK we might expect the snowman to start melting away.

So now imagine it's the next day.

How do you think you would feel seeing your snowman looking like this image you can see on the screen? How would that make you feel? Pause the video.

Have a think.

Discuss with your partner or think independently and press play when you are ready to move on.

I heard lots of different responses there.

I heard people talking about, I feel a bit disappointed.

I put all that work into building that snowman.

But ultimately I heard most of you saying, "Well, I wouldn't be too upset, because part of the fun of building a snowman is you know that it's just gonna be there for one day.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be the perfect snowman because tomorrow it will be gone." Now this concept, this idea of the snowman not lasting, this is an example of transience.

The snowman existed and now it has passed away, from that Latin term.

Now let's look at a different image.

Let's look at the image you can see on the screen of the flowers.

How might this image relate to this idea of transience Do you think.

Pause the video, have a think, have a discuss, and press play when you think you've got some ideas.

Really interesting, I heard lots of different things there, but I heard a number of you saying, "Well, this image reminds us that nothing really lasts forever.

Flowers can be beautiful during the spring and the summer, but ultimately they're gonna eventually wilt." And that they can be, that can represent, it can be a metaphor for lots of things in life 'cause nothing really lasts forever.

So here are two images that represent some of the ideas from the poems that we were gonna be looking at.

These poems are both in your additional materials as a reminder, so you are gonna want to have them in front of you 'cause we are gonna be looking at them later in the lesson.

So I want to think about how these two images that you can see on the screen, how did they link to the idea of transience? And if you haven't looked at these poems before, what do you think might happen in these poems? What might these poems be about? Okay, pause the video, have a little bit of a think.

Have a discuss with a partner or by yourself.

How do these images link to the idea of transience, and what might the poems that they represent be about? All right, over to you.

Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, welcome back, some fantastic discussions there.

Great job.

So I want you to compare what your discussions with one of our Oak pupils, Izzy, and she said, "How do you think these images relate to the idea of transience?" Well she said, "In terms of the image of the man playing in the snow, I think it relates to transience, because we know that snow is eventually gonna melt.

The activity is only temporary." Okay, that's half the fun of playing in the snow is we know it's not gonna happen every day.

It's not something we can do in every day.

Certainly not in the UK with our climate, but maybe I heard people in saying similar things to Izzy when they said in terms of the image of the parents and the child on the beach.

It relates to the idea of transience because that relationship is gonna change as the child grows older.

That child is not gonna stay that age, and is not gonna be as dependent on their parents as they are at that point.

As they grow, they will become more independent and that relationship with the parents will change.

And that really shows the idea of transience there.

So what do you think will happen about the poems? Well, I heard lots of you saying, "Maybe both of these poems are about coming to terms, getting used to this idea that that life is transient." Or the transient of life, that life is short and will eventually pass.

Well done if you said something similar to anything you can see on the screen.

And of course you may have different ideas as well, and that's absolutely okay as long as you can logically justify them.

All right, then let's pause for a moment and check our understanding.

What does transience mean? Is it means something that A, only lasts for a short amount of time? Is it B, it's something that is permanent and lasts forever? Or is it C, is on the threshold of somewhere? What do you think? Pause the video and have a little bit of a think.

Is it A, B or C? Press play when you think you've got the right answer.

Yeah, great work if you said A, transience means something that only lasts for a short amount of time.

Okay, so something that is permanent is definitely not transient.

And I wonder if you worked out what C was describing.

Fantastic if you said the word liminality when talking about thresholds, okay? It's a really interesting idea that we see in English text.

So well done if you got that right, but we're not looking at liminality today.

We're focusing on transience, well done if you've got A.

Okay, over to you then for our first task in today's lesson.

So arguably both the poems that we are gonna be looking at in this lesson consider ideas of transience.

What I want you to think about is why do you think poets might want to write about the idea of transience? Some things that you may wish to consider whilst you are thinking about this question.

You might want to consider that poems generally explore emotions and human reactions.

You might want to think about what the idea of transience of life might mean, and you might want to think about why poets might want to explore the emotions around transience.

Okay, if you've got a partner, I think this will be a fantastic task for you to do together as a discussion.

See if you can agree with, build on, or challenge each other's ideas if you don't agree with them.

But don't worry if you're working by yourself.

Still a fantastic opportunity for you to reflect on the question made by making a few notes or just thinking to yourself what you would say if you had a partner to discuss with.

All right, pause the video.

Over to you and press play when you have got some ideas.

Good luck.

Really fantastic job there.

Well done to those of you who are having discussions and you were really respectfully building on or challenging your partner's ideas.

Great to see.

All right, let's have a look at Sofia, one of our Oak pupil's response.

And I think you want and and I think it's great for us to have a moment of reflection and think, "How much does Sofia's response align with mine? Are there any ideas that I might take forward for the rest of this lesson from Sofia's response?" So Sofia said, "I think the transience of life refers to how nothing in life is permanent and everything is subject to change.

Ultimately time passes and our lives are only temporary.

This is something that we will all have to experience and therefore it makes sense that poets would want to explore these emotions.

Furthermore, when we read these poems, it might help us to process and explore our own feelings around the transience of life and relationships." So I wonder if you said anything similar to Sofia.

I wonder if there are any of Sofia's ideas that you didn't think of and you thought, "Yeah, I think that's a great idea.

I might try and use that later in today's lesson." All right, pause the video, reflect on Sofia's response and press play when you're ready to continue.

All right, welcome back.

So in the first half of today's lesson, we did some excellent work trying to understand this idea of transience and now we're gonna compare how ideas of transience appear in two poems. So we're gonna start considering the similarities and differences in how two unseen poems approach the idea of transience.

We're going to begin with Michael Laskey's "Nobody." There's a copy of this in your additional material, so please make sure you have it in front of you.

Now, whenever we're looking unseen poetry, I'm gonna hand the reading over to you.

Really important skill that you can read some of these poems independently.

All right, so pause video, read this poem once, twice, three times.

Check that you really understand what you think it's about.

Check that you recognise most of the words, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Welcome back, some fantastic independent reading there.

Now I'd like you to think about how you would summarise this poem in one sentence, okay? If you could put this sentence in, sorry, this poem into one sentence of your own, what would you say? Pause the video, have a think.

Discuss with a partner if you've got one.

Or just think about this independently.

All right, pause the video, give this a go and press play when you're ready to continue.

Some really interesting ideas here.

And of course there isn't one way we can summarise this poem.

You might have said something similar to the speaker is urging the reader to make the most of life and not let it pass them by.

You might have talked about a more literal meaning about linking this to the idea of snow, and playing in the snow, and footsteps in the snow.

You might have had any of those kind of ideas in there.

Of course there are many different ways you could have summarised this poem.

As long as you think, "If I said this to someone and they read the poem, would those two things match up?" If the answer is yes, then that's a great summary.

All right, let's move on to our second unseen poem.

And this is Robin Robertson's "Donegal." There is also a copy of this in your additional materials.

So do make sure you have a copy because now it is your turn to do the reading.

So read through this poem once, twice, three times, making sure that you have read it through carefully, you've understood the words that are in front of you, and you can start to piece it together and work out what this poem is about.

All right, over to you for some independent reading.

Pause the video and press play when you are done.

Great reading, now it's time for you to summarise.

So again, can you summarise this poem in one sentence? You can do this with a partner if you wish, or you can just do this independently.

Pause the video, give it a go, and press play when you're ready to continue.

All right, great job.

As I said previously, there's more than one way to summarise a poem.

You might have said something similar to this.

Arguably the poem is about children growing up and not needing their parents as much anymore.

Well done if have you got something similar.

Of course you might have said something slightly different and that's okay.

All right then, what I want us to start thinking about is how this idea of transience appears in these two poems. So again, a discussion task for you to do in pairs or individually.

Can you choose one quotation from each of the poems that represent this idea of transience? Of course there may be more than one quotation, so you and your partner may wish to challenge each other and try and explain why you think your quotation is the one that you should be selecting.

If you're working independently, you can of course try and weigh up and evaluate which are the best from each poem that really represent the idea of transience.

Okay, over to you now.

Pause the video, find some quotations, and press play when you're ready to continue.

I'm sure you can have lots of ideas for this one.

And it was great to hear those of you who working in pairs discussing so respectfully, if you didn't agree, that's what we want to hear.

I'm gonna share a couple of examples from our Oak pupils and you can compare to see if you've got similar ones.

So Laura said that from Laskey's "Nobody" that she'd have chosen "A whole day of snow nobody's trodden." And Alex said if he was looking at "Donegal" he said he'd chosen, "I would choose 'His daughter going where he knew he could not follow'." They are two examples of quotes.

I wonder if you picked similar ones.

Maybe you'd pick different ones.

And of course that's absolutely fine as long as you can justify your choices.

Okay, now we picked our quotations.

It's time for us to explain the connotations of these quotations.

What are they telling us about transience? What inferences about transience can we make? Again, this is something you can do verbally, okay? Or you can just think this through.

There's no need to write this down.

You can do if you wish, but otherwise you can just think through this with a partner or just think through this independently, okay? Over to you, those quotations that you picked or the quotations that I picked, what connotations could you make? What inferences about transience could you make? Over to you.

Fantastic.

Great work there.

I'm gonna share some examples for my two quotations, but of course if you've looked at different quotations, you might have slightly different ideas, and we can just see how similar they are.

So in "Nobody" in that quotation, "A whole day of snow nobody's trodden" We could say that this really shows that snow won't last forever.

So if the snow hasn't been trodden on then that day really hasn't been taken advantage of.

People haven't made the most of that day.

And in "Donegal", "His daughter going where he knew he could not follow," we could argue, well, the relationship between the father and the daughter has changed.

She doesn't need him in the same way anymore, the same way that she did when she was younger.

And that really shows this transience that that relationship is not over, but the closeness or the lack of independence that the relationship represented when the child was so young, that was short lasting.

Okay, so now we're gonna put us summarising skills to use by trying to summarise the ideas of transience in the two poems. Over to you for this.

So we want to kind of remember a summary.

We want to just keep it short, keep it simple.

We want to explain how transience appears in "Nobody" and how transient appears in "Donegal." All right, if you want to work with a partner for this and you've got a partner you can do.

Otherwise work through this independently.

Pause the video, give it a go, and press play when you're ready to move on.

Welcome back, let's have a look at some of the things that you might have said.

So you might have said in Laskey's "Nobody" the poem arguably invites the reader to reflect on whether they are actually making the most of their life.

You might have said for "Donegal" that Robertson arguably muses, he kind of ponders, he thinks about how our relationships with our children change as they grow older and more independent.

I wonder if you said something similar.

Well done if you did, but of course, well done if you said something slightly different as long as you can justify your answer.

So arguably we can say that both poems consider the ideas of transience.

Now I want us to start thinking about what are the subtle differences are in the terms of their, the different poets ideas of transience and what they're trying to say about it.

What do you think the subtle differences are? Again, over to you for a discussion here with pairs or independently, what are the subtle differences in terms of the ideas of transience? Pause the video, give this question a go, and press play when you are done.

Welcome back, some potentially really interesting ideas there.

I think this is really challenging to find subtle differences, but well done for giving this a go.

Let's have a look at some of the things that you might have said.

So you could have said something similar to the answer you can see on screen, "Perhaps the subtle differences comes from how the poets relay their ideas of transience." In Laskey's "Nobody" he invites the reader to personally consider whether they are taking advantage of life and consider how transience relates to our individual life experience, whilst the speaker in Robertson's "Donegal" relates to transience to how our relationships with others grow and evolve over time.

So one of them is about our own individual relationship with the transience of life.

And the other one is much more about our relationships and how they are transience over the course of our lifetime.

Really subtle differences there, and well done if you've said something similar to what you can see on the screen.

Okay, then let's check our understanding.

Which of the following statements are true? Is it A, that Laskey's "Nobody" considers the transient of relationships? Is it B, that Laskey's "Nobody" considers the transience of life? Or is it C, Robinson's "Donegal" considers the transience of relationships? Give you a little clue.

There may be more than one right answer.

Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Great work if you said B and C.

"Nobody" is more about the transience of life, whereas "Donegal" is more specifically about the transience of relationships.

Great work.

Okay, onto our final task of today's lesson then.

We know that arguably both poems consider the idea that things in life are not permanent and you need to enjoy them while you can.

What I want you to think about now doing that comparison, which poem do you think has a more optimistic, a more hopeful tone about this idea of transience? Okay, we're gonna do some comparing.

Things you might want to consider.

That the speaker of Laskey's poem asks the reader to promise to not let the same thing happen to them.

And in that quotation that we looked at earlier in the lesson, his daughter going where he could not follow, that's the final line of Robinson's "Donegal." What's the impact of that? There are two things you can think about.

Of course, you can think about other things.

This would be a fantastic task to do as a pair, discussion if you've got a partner.

Otherwise, if you're working by yourself, you could just make a few notes.

All right, pause the video, give this a go.

Best of luck and press play when you're ready to continue.

Welcome back, some really great discussions there.

It was great to hear so many contrasting ideas about which parent they felt was more optimistic.

We're gonna reflect now.

We've been looking at personal responses and comparing ideas, and I think whenever we think about our own personal responses, they are just that, they're personal to us.

But hearing other people's ideas really allows us to reflect on our own ideas and sometimes build and develop them.

So we're gonna take this moment of reflection at the end of today's lesson to compare our ideas to those of one of our Oak pupils, Izzy.

And Izzy wrote, "Arguably Laskey's 'Nobody' has a more optimistic tone in regards to the transience of life since the speaker asked the reader to promise that they will not sit by and let life pass them by again, which implies they can still change the way that they live their life to make sure they don't miss opportunities.

Robertson's 'Donegal,' on the other hand, ends with the image of the father not being able to follow the daughter, which implies there's a sense of finality around how their relationship has changed, and they can't return to how it once was." Why don't you pause the video for a minute and have a reflection.

How similar was your ideas to Izzy, and are there any ideas from Izzy's that you'd like to take forward? All right, pause the video, give this a go, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Well, that's it, we've reached the end of today's lesson.

Some really fantastic discussions on a pretty tricky topic here, so well done.

And it's great to see you really wrestling with that concept of transience and hopefully you'll be able to see it when it appears in other poems. On the screen you can see a summary of all the learning that we've covered today.

Let's go through that together so you can feel really confident before you move on to our next lesson.

So we've learned that the transience of life is an idea that impacts us all.

The idea of transience is explored across literature, including in many different poems. Arguably, both Laskey and Robertson consider ideas of transience in their poems. Laskey's "Nobody" could relate to how we need to take opportunities in life when we have the chance.

And Robertson's "Donegal" may relate to how our relationships with others are always growing and changing.

Great work today, thank you so much for joining me.

I do hope to see you in one of our lessons again in the future.

Have a good day, bye-bye.