Hi there, Mr. Barnsley here.

Fantastic to see you.

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

Today, we are gonna be planning a response to an unseen poem.

We're gonna be using the poem "Next Door," which you will find in your additional materials.

It's best to make sure you have a copy in front of you.

Okay, time for us to get started.

Let's dive in.

So let's have a look at today's outcome then, shall we? By the end of the lesson, you are gonna be able to plan a response to an unseen poem.

Now, there are four keywords I want you to keep an eye out for, chronologically, ambiguity, organise, and thematically.

The two I want to draw your attention to right now are chronologically, which means a way that follows the order in which a series events happens, so starting from the beginning and working through to the end, and thematically is a way that relates to subjects or themes of something.

So if we think about something thematically, we think of some of the ideas of the subjects that might be within that poem.

So let's keep an eye out for them and let's also make sure we're keeping an eye out for ambiguity and organise when they appear.

So to plan a response to an unseen poem, they're gonna be two learning cycles today.

First, we're gonna think about collecting our thoughts, and then we're gonna think about a way of organising our thoughts.

So let's start by collecting our thoughts, shall we? So today we're gonna be planning a response to Helen Dunmore's "Next Door." You'll find a copy of this poem in your additional materials.

Now, you may have already read this poem before in a previous lesson, but don't worry if you're reading this for the first time.

Now is the time for you to pause your video and read through this poem carefully.

As you're reading, think what's it about, who's talking, what are the messages, what's the tone, and the mood of the poem.

All right, over to you now.

Remember, this poem is in your additional materials.

Pause the video, read through this carefully, and press Play when you think you are ready to move on.

Welcome back.

Some fantastic reading going on there.

Okay, whenever we read a poem then, one of the first things we should do is try to summarise what we think that poem is about.

So over to you.

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

Otherwise, you can just think through or maybe make a few notes on a bit of paper.

How could you summarise the poem in one sentence? This is tricky, have a think about this.

Pause the video, give this a go, and press Play when you think you have a response.

Welcome back.

I heard some really interesting ideas there.

I heard lots of you talking about this is about two neighbours who live opposite each other.

Some of you went a little bit further and you said this was a reflection of like how we might see ourselves in other people or how you might see differences in other people, how we might see behaviours reflected in ourselves in other people.

You might have even taken this one step further 'cause when we think about poetry, we think, "Okay, what's happening on the surface?" and then we try and dig a little bit deeper and try and think of some of those deeper messages.

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

The speaker of "Next Door" wonders whether we only see what we want to see in other people through a reflection on their life and their neighbor's life.

So well done if you started to dig a little bit deeper and think, "On the surface, this is about two neighbours but deeper down, this might be about, you know, how we behave, human behaviour, what we like to see in others, what we want to see in others." Fantastic if you've got any ideas like that down on your bit of paper if you discuss those things.

That's really great to see you looking for deeper meanings in poems. Okay, let's pause for a minute and check to see how we're getting on.

So true or false? Dunmore expresses ideas of ambiguity in "Next Door." Remember, ambiguity means open to more than one interpretation, maybe not completely clear when we have to think, we have to read between the lines, we have to be open to the idea that this might mean more than one thing.

Is that an idea that we see Dunmore expressing in "Next Door," do you think? Pause the video, have a think, is that true or false and press Play when you think you have an answer.

Great work if you said true.

Now let's justify that, shall we? Is it A, that "Next Door" expresses ideas of ambiguity around reality and sense of self, or is it B, "Next Door" expresses ideas of ambiguity around reality and time? So what is it that is open to more than one interpretation do we think in this poem? What idea is it that we are left feeling a little bit, is a little bit ambiguous here? Pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you think you have an answer.

Yes, great work if you said A, it's that real sense of self that we're wondering, what is it that the speaker is reflecting on, what is it that they're seeing in their neighbours? Well done if you responded with A there.

All right, over to you for our first task of today's lesson, and this is all about collecting our thoughts as we prepare to answer this question: How does Dunmore present the two families in Next Door? So step one before you do anything is you are gonna read that poem again.

Okay, whenever we're reading poetry, we never stop with just one read through, or even two.

We want to make sure we've read the poem a few times to make sure we've thought about every possible interpretation, we've thought about how we are responding to this poem.

All right, so that's step one, you're gonna reread the poem, and once you've done that, you're gonna create a mind-map of all of your thoughts and ideas relating to the two families in the poem.

Okay, so anything that jumps out in that poem, anything that stands out that tells you something about one of those two families, I want you to put it on your mind-map.

All right, over to you.

Pause the video, read the poem, create that mind-map.

Best of luck.

Remember to press Play when you are ready to move on.

Wow, well done.

I saw so many fantastic ideas going down on paper.

That's so great to see.

All right, Sofia, one of our Oak pupils, had a go at this task.

I'm gonna share with you her mind-map, and I want you to think about how well do your ideas align with hers.

And if there's anything that you see on Sofia's map that you think, "Well, I didn't see that," now is the time to add that to yours.

Okay, so you may have identified there's this really juxtaposition between the silence and the parties, showing a real contrast between the families.

You might have spotted words like demolition, screech, and war.

These are all quite tense language and really show this tension between the families.

You might have highlighted that word scab, which feels really judgemental.

You might have also highlighted some onomatopoeia, the thuds and the slams, which really highlight the noise that we can hear in this poem.

But you might have spotted this word mirror.

This was an interesting one.

This is the one that adds some of that ambiguity around kind of self-perception and the way we view others.

This mirror can be a symbol of reflection and can really highlight a sense of kind of copy, that these families might almost be copies of each other, perhaps.

You might have also highlighted the unusual opening which really highlights this sense of ambiguity that we've already spoken about.

And we know that the poem also has quite an ambiguous end as well.

And finally, you might have highlighted the use of pronouns.

I think Dunmore used these really well to create this sense of separation between us and them, okay, the speaker and the neighbours.

Well done if you managed to highlight or identify any of these things that you can see on the screen.

Of course, you may have highlighted other things and that's absolutely fine as long as you can use those to justify how they help you form a personal response to the neighbours or to either of the families.

Okay, now's the time to pause the video.

If there's anything on the screen that you want to add to your mind-map, now's the time to do it.

Okay, pause the video, press Play when you're ready to move on.

Okay, we've done a great job so far collecting all of our thoughts, now it's time to help us organise them 'cause that will really help with the planning process.

So once you've collected your thoughts, the next thing you want to do is really think about and interrogate, "How am I gonna organise these thoughts to craft a response so I can put my ideas down in a logical way so if anyone's reading my work, they can follow my argument, it's sequenced well?" And there are a couple of ways that we might organise our thoughts and they are two key words, I wonder if you can remember what they mean, chronologically and thematically.

Why don't you pause the video for a minute and just see if you can remind yourself what those words mean.

Okay, welcome back.

So for chronologically, you might have said, or you should have said that that's working in an order, a timeline of how things happen.

So when were ordering our things chronologically, we'd be thinking from the beginning of the poem to the end.

Now thematically is when we look at ideas, themes, subjects within the poem and group those ideas together.

So once we've ordered our thoughts, it can really help us, or the process of ordering our thoughts can really help us to come to an idea or a conclusion about how we're gonna approach this question.

It really helps us understand what our interpretation or how we might be viewing the poem, and in this case, the families in the poem.

So let's start by thinking about ordering our ideas chronologically, shall we? To do that, we might ask ourselves the following questions: What thoughts relate to the opening of the poem? What thoughts relate to the middle of the poem? What thoughts relate to the end of the poem? So let's pause for a minute and what do we think the benefits might be of organising our thoughts chronologically? All right, pause the video.

If you've got a partner, you can talk through your ideas with them.

Otherwise, you can just work through this independently.

All right, pause the video, over to you, and press Play when you're ready to continue.

I heard some fantastic ideas there.

You might have said something along this line, and I really liked those of you who did, that it allows us to see progression of ideas.

We get to see how ideas change.

We get to follow the journey that we, the readers, take as we read the poem, so it feels like our response is kind of sequenced to the journey that we've gone through as a reader.

So if we were to order Sofia's plan, the mind-map, chronologically, it might look like this.

We start with the unusual opening, which highlights the ambiguity.

We then have that juxtaposition of silence and the parties.

We look at the use of pronouns, which create separation.

We then can tackle that onomatopoeia and the tense language before focusing on that word mirror before finishing with that ambiguous ending.

And you can see that if I work through where these fit in the poem, so I've got the beginning of the poem, the middle of the poem, and the ending of the poem that I could talk about.

So what do you notice through this organisation? I said that when you organise your ideas, you might start to spot a pattern, an idea might jump off the page.

It might give you a really interesting interpretation of the poem that you can talk about.

So when we order our ideas in this manner, what jumps off the page? What do you notice? Pause the video, have a think about this.

This is a tricky question.

So if you've got a partner, you can kind of share some ideas together.

Otherwise, you could just think through this independently.

Okay? But like this is a bit of a tricky question, so take some time to think through what's standing out when we organise our thoughts like this.

All right, pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you are ready to share your ideas.

All right, I heard lots of interesting ideas that I really want to shine a spotlight on one thing that I heard 'cause I thought it was great and it was those of you who were saying how the poem both begins and ends with ambiguity.

That really jumps off the page when we organise our thoughts chronologically.

So by organising Sofia's thoughts chronologically, we notice that the poem begins and ends with ambiguity.

Now we know our question is "How does Dunmore present the two families in 'Next Door?'" so how might this knowledge, this knowledge that the poem begins and ends with ambiguity, how might that help Sofia come to an understanding of how to approach this question? Okay? Pause the video, have a think about this one.

Discuss in pairs or think through independently how does that knowledge that the poem begins and ends with ambiguity, how might that help Sofia to understand how to approach this question? Pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you have some ideas that you are willing to share.

Okay, I heard some really nice ideas there.

One that I do want to just shine a spotlight on is those of you who said that perhaps Sofia could suggest that by the poem beginning and ending, opening and closing with ambiguity, Dunmore is showing how the lines of distinction are blurred between the two families and the reader is ultimately left questioning what is real.

We've got this sense of kind of the speaker wanting to create this separation between the families but ultimately, the ambiguity suggests maybe there's more similarity there than we might first thought and that distinction between those families are blurred.

And that could be a real focus of our argument talking about the distinction between the families and how similar or different they actually might be.

We are left with this question of what is real, you know, who do we believe, how do we view these families? Very, very ambiguous, lots of things open to interpretation and that could be something really interesting to focus on.

All right, let's pause for a minute and check how we are getting on.

So organising Sofia's thoughts are about around "Next Door" chronologically shows us which of the following ideas? Does it A, show us that the poem begins with ambiguity but ends in certainty, is it B, that the poem begins and ends with ambiguity, or is it C, that the poem begins and ends with tension between the families? What do you think? All right, pause the video, select your answer and press Play when you think you have the right idea.

Yeah, great work if you said B, the poem both begins and ends with ambiguity.

All right then, so we've thought about ordering our ideas chronologically, now let's have a think about what's the impact of organising our thoughts thematically.

So if you are going to try and order your thoughts thematically, you might want to ask yourself the following question: How can I group my thoughts, my ideas from my mind-map, how can I group them separately? Can I put them in separate groups with separate headings? Okay? So for example, we might connect Sofia's thoughts about that word scab, which is very judgmental, with the idea of demolition and both of those can go under this heading of tenseness or tension 'cause they both imply this real negativity from the speaker to the other family.

So what do you think the benefits might be then of organising your thoughts thematically? Why don't you pause the video, think through this with a partner or think through this independently about what might be the benefits of organising your thoughts thematically.

Pause the video, over to you.

Welcome back, some great ideas there.

I really liked it when I heard people saying that it helps us see which ideas and themes have the most evidence and therefore it can help us decide our understanding or our focus for our answer.

So if we have these different headings and one of them has loads of evidence and neither one has a little bit less, it might make us go, "Okay, we should maybe focus on this argument, this one that has lots of evidence that we can use to support our interpretation." Okay, so if we organise Sofia's thoughts thematically, it might look like this.

So for this idea or this theme of ambiguity, we might be able to talk about the unusual opening.

We might talk about the mirror that reflects and shows that copying and us not being able to see that distinction between the speaker and the neighbours, and we have the ambiguous ending.

Whereas if we had this other heading of this tense contrast between the two neighbours, we might have talked about the juxtaposition between silence and parties.

We might talked about the use of pronouns, which created that separation.

We might have talked about the harsh onomatopoeia, the thuds and the slams, and we might have talked about that tense language, the demolition, the screech, the war.

So if we were to organise our thoughts thematically, what do you notice about this type of organisation? What ideas stands out? What feels like the right focus for Sofia to think about as she works on this answer? Pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you think you have an idea.

Yeah, great work if you said, "Actually when we look at it this way, it feels like Sofia has more evidence to think about the tension in this poem and how this is about two families who are kind of juxtaposed than it would be to focus on the ambiguity." So by organising Sofia's thoughts thematically, we notice that actually she has more of those thoughts about the idea of tense contrast than she does about the ambiguity.

So when we think about our question about the poem, "How does Dunmore present the two families in 'Next Door?'" how does that knowledge that actually Sofia thinks this is a poem more about tense contrast, how does that help us understand how she might approach the question? Okay? So think about how you might approach the question now you're focusing more on tension and contrast, how does that change your response? Pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you've got some ideas.

Okay, some really interesting ideas there and it's really interesting to hear how those ideas felt quite different to the ideas that you might have been thinking about when you organised our thoughts chronologically.

So I heard people saying that actually, perhaps Sofia could say that yes, Dunmore suggests ambiguity but ultimately, this is a poem that implies that we are always judging others and actually, you know, we can argue that's not a very good thing but it shows the real judgmental side of human nature.

So again, by organising our thoughts differently, you can see we might have a shift in the way that it directs us to respond to this poem.

All right, let's pause for a minute.

True or false? Organising Sofia's thoughts thematically really highlights the ambiguity that runs throughout the poem.

Is that true or false? Pause the video, have a think, press Play when you think you have an answer.

Over to you.

Well done if you said false.

Let's justify that, shall we? Is it A, that organising thematically highlights the tension that runs throughout the poem, or is it B, organising thematically highlights the sense of friendship throughout the poem? Which of those do you think is correct? Pause the video, have a think, press Play when you have an answer.

Yes, well done if you said A.

All right, over to you now for our final task of today's lesson.

I want you to return to the mind-map that you made in response to the question, "How does Dunmore present the two families in 'Next Door?'" and I want you to now organise your thoughts either chronologically or thematically to create a plan for your response.

Pause the video, create that plan, and press Play when you think you have finished.

All right, some great planning work there.

Really well done.

Before we finish today's lesson, I want us just to reflect on that process that we've just been through.

So I want you to think through these questions and ask yourself, did you choose to organise your thoughts chronologically or thematically? Did your organisation help you to consider how to approach this question? Do you think your approach would be different if you'd chosen a different organisational method? And do you think you'll choose to organise your thoughts chronologically or thematically in the future? Pause the video and ask yourself those questions, do some self-reflection, and press Play when you think you are done.

Okay, fantastic work today.

On the screen, you can see a summary of all the learning that we have covered today.

Let's quickly run through that so you can feel really confident before you move on to your next lesson.

So we've learned that to organise your thoughts chronologically, you might consider what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of the poem.

By organising your thoughts chronologically.

you can consider the progression of ideas throughout the poem.

To organise your thoughts thematically, you might consider where the distinctions are between your ideas, and by organising your thoughts thematically, you might consider which ideas have more evidence than others.

Fantastic work today.

Thank you so much for joining me and I do hope to see you in one of our lessons in the future.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.