Hi, everyone, this is Mr. Chandrapala and I'm really looking forward to working with you today on developing personal responses to unseen poetry.

A lot of the time there's a lot of confusion amongst my students about what it means to develop a personal response, but actually this is one of the most freeing moments in the exam curriculum, I think, for English literature.

It's a moment when you really get to express what you think about poem and what you feel about that rather than thinking about what your teacher or I may have told you.

Let's dive in and get into the meat of today's lesson.

So our outcome for today, funnily enough, is to be able to develop a personal response to an unseen poem.

Our key words include the adjective pertinent, which means relating directly to the subject, being considered something that is relevant, the adjective personal, which means belonging to or affecting a particular person rather than anyone else.

The adjective evocative, which means bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind.

The noun ambiguity, which is a situation in which something has more than one possible meaning.

And finally, the verb reframe, to change the way something is expressed or considered.

Our lesson is in two parts today, and we're gonna start off by responding to an unseen poem.

So a personal response to a text is generally asking you to consider the effect a text has on you, not on anyone else, not on everyone, but on you.

In order to start considering your response to an unseen poem, you might want to ask yourself the following questions.

You might want to consider how the poem makes you feel, the theme or idea of the poem, and whether it's relevant to you? Are there any elements that you just don't understand or that are may be slightly confusing? That in of itself can be sometimes interesting.

Which words or phrases draw your attention? Today we're going to be working on responding to Helen Dunmore's "Next Door." A copy of this can be found in the additional materials for today's lesson.

I'm just gonna ask you to pause the video first, and I want you to read through this poem independently.

Once you've done so, come back and hit play.

Really careful reading by so many of you there, and I was so pleased to see so many of you really enjoying that first read.

Let's keep going.

I want you to think about your initial impressions of the poem.

I just want you to tell me or tell the person next to you or the rest of your class, or if you're working by yourself, just jotting down your own response.

Do you like the poem? Do you not like the poem? Why? What is your initial impression, and what helped to develop that for you? Once you've done that, hit play.

Really interesting stuff there.

So just a quick check for understanding, just so I know that you've understood the poem.

Which of the following statements about Dunmore's "Next Door" are true? Is it A, Dunmore's "Next Door" depicts a relationship between neighbouring houses, B, Dunmore's "Next Door" recounts an argument between neighbouring houses, or C, Dunmore's "Next Door" shows how neighbours help and care for each other.

Pause the video, select your options, and want you've done that, hit play.

Really well done, everyone.

Only the first option is true.

Dunmore's "Next Door" depicts relationship between the neighbouring houses.

They're not necessarily arguing.

The argument seems to happen in the neighbouring house, in the house "Next Door", and the neighbours don't seem to really care for each other.

There is this quiet distance between them.

So I'm just going to ask you to reread Dunmore's "Next Door".

I want you to answer the following questions to help develop your personal response.

They're the same questions that I went through right at the start.

So I want you to consider how does the poem make you feel? Is the theme or idea of the poem relevant to you? Are there any elements that you just don't understand? Maybe think about why you don't understand them or why that could be interesting, and which words or phrases draw your attention? Once you've answered those questions, I want you to hit play.

After that, we'll take some feedback.

So pause the video now, answer those questions.

And when you're ready, hit play.

I love seeing how many of you were really clearly and carefully annotating your work and making sure that you had your own responses to that.

Let's take some feedback now.

So we're gonna have a look at Izzy's response.

How well does this align with your own ideas? You may want to add anything that you really like or you may want to challenge anything that you think you interpret differently to Izzy.

So the first question, how does the poem make you feel? Izzy noted that the neighbours don't seem friendly with one another, and she felt sad because of that.

About the scene or the idea being relevant to her, she says that actually, "The people copying or mirroring each other is relevant to me," and I think that that's true, isn't it? There's always something that we're trying to mirror or reflect about someone else, whether that's in school or at home, and that may be because we think that they're someone to aspire to or there's very close to us, or we want them to like us.

Other elements that we don't understand.

It's interesting because Izzy says that she "doesn't understand the idea of the neighbours mirroring each other," oh, sorry, She says that she "understands the idea of the neighbours mirroring each other, but not sure she understands the idea of never seeing what's real." That's interesting, isn't it? What does it mean for someone to seem real? What does that idea of authenticity mean? In terms of what ideas that drew her attention, she looked at the word scab and thought that that really helped her describe the neighbor's lawn.

She says "It really stands out," but is there anything particularly interesting about that word scab? Consider the sort of connotations it has of wounds.

What does that maybe suggest about the nature of the house next door? Pause the video.

There may be things that you want to add to your own responses, which is absolutely great.

Please do add them.

If there's anything that you would want to develop, make sure to do that.

And once you've done so, hit play.

Some really careful annotation there, some really thoughtful approach to that feedback.

Well done, everyone.

Let's keep moving.

We're now gonna have a look at Sofia's response to the poem.

Compare how again it aligns to your ideas.

Sophia said that she just "didn't like the poem." It's made her feel too tense and that she felt that she found that the poem was really about people judging each other and that felt relevant to her.

In terms of things that she didn't understand, she's not quite sure why the title and the first line merge together.

And then in terms of words or phrases that drew her attention, she was really interested in that question, "What will I see?" I'm really pleased with the fact that Sofia here is really trying to think about structure.

She's considering that link between the title and the first line, and even the fact that it ends on that question.

It's a really interesting response in comparison to Izzy's.

Again, if there's anything you would like to add, just take a moment, add it in a different colour pen, and maybe bring your own notes to it.

Once you've done that, hit play.

Well done, everyone.

So what we're now going to do is we're going to work on developing our own responses.

We've looked at Izzy and Sofia's and you've had a moment to develop your own.

Let's have a work, have a little bit of time to develop that even further.

So we've gathered our initial responses, but we now need to just consider what makes them personal and how we can do that.

Let's consider the first question.

How does the poem make you feel? Just a reminder, Izzy said, "The poem made her feel sad," but we can reframe Izzy's response to talk about the mood of the poem.

We just change that to saying, "The poem makes me feel sad," to "The mood of the poem is sad." Can we think of a synonym for sad that would develop Izzy's response a little bit further? We're not just looking for a more sophisticated adjective here.

We're looking for a maybe more specific adjective.

There's loads of ways that things can be sad, but what specifically makes us sad about this poem? Pause the video.

Have that discussion in your class or in your pairs or independently work through that, and once you've done so, hit play.

So we could change Izzy's response, couldn't we? So instead of saying that it says it's just sad.

We could say that it's poignant.

If we're thinking about something being poignant, we can say that it almost sort of sparks new ideas within us.

It makes us think about things in in a slightly more reflective way.

It's still sad, but it causes that reflection.

Now let's consider the second question.

Is the theme or idea of the poem relevant to us? How do we think we could reframe this to develop the idea of the response? Think about how would the last one, instead of saying, "Oh, this poem makes me feel sad," as Izzy did, we started to say, "Well, actually the mood of the poem is sad." And then we change that again to, "The mood of the poem is poignant." How could we do a similar thing here when thinking about the themes or ideas? Pause the video, have that discussion in your class and when you're ready, hit play.

Some really interesting contributions there, everyone.

Let's take some feedback.

So Laura argued, "Maybe we could say it's pertinent." Izzy adds, "Yes or we could say how it relates to the wider idea of society or human nature." So how would we reframe Izzy's idea about how it's relevant? Izzy had said, "I think the idea of mirroring others is relevant to me." How could we just switch that as Izzy had helped Laura to? So instead of saying that as Laura had that it was pertinent, saying that "It reflects societal ideas." How could we do a similar thing here? Pause the video, have that discussion in your pairs and once you've done that, hit play.

Fantastic work there, everyone.

So if we were thinking about how we could reframe Izzy's idea of how it's relevant, we could say, as Laura has done, "That the idea of seeing ourselves reflected in others speaks to wider ideas of human nature and society." So we're thinking here about taking our initial kernel and exploring a little bit further what it reflects about wider society.

That is what both Izzy did for Laura, and Laura has done for Izzy.

Let's just have a quick chat for understanding here.

Considering your emotional response to the poem relates to which of the following terms? Is it the tone of the poem, the mood of the poem, or the theme of the poem? Pause the video, select A, B, or C.

And once you've done so, hit play.

Well done, everyone.

It links to the mood of the poem.

We're now going to consider our third question.

Are there any elements that you just don't understand? Again, we're gonna be considering how we could reframe the idea of not understanding.

So Laura says, "Maybe we could talk about ambiguity." And Izzy agrees.

She says, "I could say that the concepts of reality in the poem are ambiguous." If we then think about that fourth question, which words or phrases draw our attention, I want you to consider how we could reframe this response.

Pause the video, have that discussion, and once you're ready, hit play.

Some really interesting ideas that I really liked how we were beginning to reframe that fourth question.

Laura said, "Well, maybe we could talk about the words being evocative," whilst Izzy says, "Yes, or we could talk about them being powerful or engaging." All of these are interesting terms. Evocative is obviously a term from our key words for today.

We would need to maybe specify what feeling it is evoking within us, but it's still a really interesting idea.

Again, a quick check for understanding.

You shouldn't talk about what you don't understand in a poem.

True or false? Pause the video, select true or false, and when you're ready, hit play.

Well done, everyone.

We can say that that is false, but can we justify it? Is it because we should try to come up with an interpretation of every aspect of the poem, even if we don't understand it? Or is it because we should be talking about ideas that we don't fully understand as being ambiguous and talking about how the ambiguity makes us feel? Pause the video, select A or B to justify.

And when you've done that, hit play.

Well done.

I know it could be really difficult thinking about talking about something that we don't understand, but we do it because even though we don't fully understand it, that ambiguity is really interesting to explore because that in itself creates emotion within us.

So we're just going to now practise and we're going to develop our personal responses.

I want you to reframe your personal response to answer each of the following questions.

So now, if we think about that initial starting point, you're now moving from thinking about how you felt to the mood of the poem, and then you're thinking about how the ideas in the poem are pertinent to notions of human nature and wider society.

You're gonna consider what is ambiguous in the poem and what is particularly evocative in the poem? All of these questions are linked to those initial questions that we did in the first part of the lesson.

So you may still return to similar answers, but you're just going to uplevel them a little bit.

You are gonna be thinking about actually what they're saying on a much deeper level now because you are thinking less, almost counterintuitively, about your initial impression and more about what it's saying about what you think society as a whole has to learn from this.

Pause video.

Have a go at that, and once you are ready, hit play.

Some lovely ideas there, everyone.

Let's take some feedback.

Sofia has developed her responses just a little bit.

How well does it align with your own response? One thing about the mood of the poem, she said, "Well, the mood of the poem could be seen as fraught." And ideas in the poem, which seem pertinent to notions of human nature and wider society, she said, "While the ideas of judgement run through the poem are pertinent to how we treat each other in society," notice how she still returned to a lot of those similar ideas that she had right at the start.

When she talks about what's ambiguous, she said, "The opening of the poem could be seen as ambiguous." Remember how at the very start she had said that the first line and the title merging was something that she was unsure about.

And then in terms of what she found particularly evocative, she said that "The final question of the poem was particularly evocative and powerful for her." Again, all she's done is she's taken those initial ideas and just reframed them.

So let's just recap today's lesson on developing a personal response to an unseen poem.

When creating a personal response to an unseen poem, it's important to start by asking how the poem makes us feel.

You might then consider which words, ideas, or phrases stand out to you, and which ones you don't understand.

What causes ambiguity? To develop your personal response, you then consider reframing those ideas and when reframing, we talk about things that are evocative, pertinent, or ambiguous in the poem.

I appreciate that this can seem really difficult, but I've been so impressed by how hard you've all worked and how well you've tackled this.

It's really gonna put you in a good position as we continue to look at unseen poetry.

Well done on all your hard work today, and I'm really looking forward to working with you again very soon.

Bye for now, everyone.