Hello there.

Welcome to today's lesson.

Fantastic to see you.

My name is Mr. Barnsley.

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

And today, we are gonna be focusing on speaker and voice.

All right, time for us to get started.

So let's have a look at today's outcome then.

By the end of the lesson, you will be able to make inferences based on the use of speaker and voice in the poem.

Now, there are five key words in today's lesson.

They are speaker, perspective, agency, tone, and conversational.

So speaker is a really key word.

We've seen it in both our title and our outcome and it means the voice behind a poem or any piece of written work, but in today's lesson, we're focusing on the speaker of a poem.

Now the perspective is the vantage point from which events of the story are filtered.

So the way that we see it.

Agency is something we talk about.

We talk about ourselves having agency, and this is about the power that we have to pilot, to lead our lives in the direction we want to go.

Tone is a really useful term for talking about poetry and it's the way that, well, it expresses the writer's attitudes towards, or feelings about the subject matter.

And conversational is an adjective we might use to describe the tone con.

Conversational means something that's quite informal, almost quite chatty.

It suggests you're talking to someone you're close to.

All right, let's look out for each of these words in today's lesson and see if we can use them in our own discussions.

So there are two learning cycles in today's lesson.

First, we're gonna be thinking of this idea of speaker and voice.

We're gonna really conceptualise it, make sure we understand what we mean by those terms, and think about how poets might use them in their poetry.

And then we're gonna look at a poem and really analyse how the poet has used speaker and voice in their work.

So let's start by conceptualising this idea of speaker and voice.

So we think it's really important that we have a consideration of the perspective that we hear within a text and also the manner that we hear it.

It's really important to help us analyse and understand a text, and in this case, a poem.

We've got to realise that the way a writer chooses for us to hear the text affects how we as the reader connect with it.

And it also will help us interpret meaning.

So it's important to acknowledge that whilst a writer may choose to have a first-person narrative, that the speaker's thoughts and feelings do not always correlate with the writer.

So just because something's written from the first-person's perspective, we shouldn't assume that that is the poet or the writer's point of view, that it is their voice that we are hearing.

Sometimes it might be, but we cannot make that assumption.

Now we also want to think about the tone of the speaker and the voice.

It's really important for us to consider as we're reading a text or a poem for the first time.

So things you might want to ask yourself as you're reading: Does the speaker seem conversational? Does it seem light and chatty? And what might that tell us about the relationships within the text? If it is conversational or if it isn't conversational, what does it tell us about any relationships that might be in the text? Is that tone reciprocal? Maybe there is more than one voice we hear in a text.

If there's two speakers, and that tone, that conversational, chatty tone we see on both sides, what might it tell us about the relationships? All right.

Let's pause for a minute and check our understanding so far.

True or false.

We always hear the writer's voice and perspective through the speaker.

Okay, so the speaker always represent the writer's voice and perspective.

Is that true or false? Pause the video, have a think, and when you think you've got an answer, press play.

Well done if you said false.

Let's justify that, shall we? Is it A, the speaker's perspective is never the same as the writer's perspective, it's all part of the creative process.

Or is it B? Whilst the writer may have shared the experience of the speaker, we cannot necessarily form a connection between them.

Which of those do you think is the best justification for our answer? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you're ready to move on.

Great work if you said A.

I don't think we can ever say that the speaker and the writer are not the same voice.

I think we could never say that, but we can never assume that they are, even if the writer and the speaker have kind of many shared experiences or shared connections.

So we might think of those who have voices in a text of people having agency.

They have control over the decisions in their life.

'Cause being able to tell our story or being hindered, being stopped from telling our story really affects our agency over ourselves and our lives.

So one thing you might want to consider when you're reading a poem or a text is whose voices do we hear and do they, therefore, have agency? And whose voice or voices do we not hear? Whose voice we hear can be really important, a really important detail just as important is whose voices we don't hear.

So I want you to imagine that we hear Izzy's voice for the majority of a text and we only hear snippets from other people.

We could represent this using this diagram on the screen.

How might you interpret this? Whose voices feel important if a text was written in this way? Why don't you pause the video and have a bit of a think about this.

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

If you're working by yourself, you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video, have a think, and press play when you think you have some ideas.

Yeah, I had lots of people there saying, arguably, not definitely, but arguably, we may see Izzy's thoughts and feelings as more important, more central to the story here.

But let's flip this around.

Let's imagine that someone is telling Izzy's story but we don't actually hear from Izzy herself.

We could represent this with this diagram here.

How might we interpret this? Okay, how might this change our interpretation from that first diagram to this one? What could we say about agency here? All right, pause the video.

Have a discussion with partners or individually.

Have a think.

What might this tell us about whose voice is important here? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you're ready to move on.

Some really interesting ideas here.

I really want to shine a spotlight when people have said something similar to this that maybe we might see Izzy as being silenced, that her voice, she's not being allowed to speak and, therefore, we can as associate this with her being marginalised, her being pushed to the outsides of society.

That's just one interpretation.

You might have had some different ideas and that's absolutely fine as long as you can justify them logically.

Okay, time to pause for a moment and check our understanding again.

This time, I want you to match the following scenarios with their possible interpretations.

Notice that word possible.

I'm not saying these are the only interpretations, this is just one way we can interpret them.

All right, I want you to pause the video, read everything on the screen and see if you can match them up correctly.

All right, over to you.

Press play when you think you've got the right responses.

All right, let's see how you did then, shall we? So if we hear the subject story being told through their own voice and perspective, we could argue then the subject has their agency, they have control over their own life.

Whereas if we hear the subject's story being told through someone else and we don't hear that subject's voice at all, we could argue that the subject does not have any agency in their own life.

Well done if you've got that correct.

So writers choose how we hear a story through their choice of narrative voice.

They might choose through some of the following: The first-person where we hear the story from one speaker's perspective.

They might hear it through the second-person where we hear the stories if you are living it.

We might hear this through the third-person limited.

This is where the speaker is describing one character's experience.

They're stepping out there, they're watching another character, but they're describing that one character's experience.

Or we might hear it from the third-person omniscient.

This is where the speaker is outside of the scenario, but they are describing multiple characters' experiences.

Omniscient kind of means ever-present.

They can see and hear everything.

All right, over to you then for the first task.

I want you to start thinking about the significant of using different narrative voices in text.

So you're gonna complete the table to do this.

I've done the first row for you.

So if a writer, an author, a poet chose to write from the first-person perspective, for example, I walk, then the significance of this might mean that it's a really personal poem.

It's very individual.

All right, over to you now to fill in the rest of the table, thinking about the second-person, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient narrative voices.

Pause the video, complete this table, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Really good job there.

It's great to see you thinking at this kind of conceptual level about speaker narrative voice.

Izzy gave this a go and I want you to see if you had similar ideas to her.

So the second-person narrative voice, she said, "Well, it puts the reader in the speaker's shoes.

It invites the reader to share the experience." Did you have something similar? For third-person limited, "It shows a real distance from the subject.

It suggests the subject is somehow silenced.

There's a lack of agency there.

Somehow, this is less personal." And for third-person omniscient, "This suggests that the subject matter affects multiple people, perhaps.

Maybe this is something that affects wider society." I wonder if you've got some of similar ideas to Izzy.

Why don't you pause the video and if there's any of Izzy's ideas you want to add to your table, now's the time to do that.

Pause the video, have a quick reflection, and then press play when you're ready to move on.

All right, welcome back.

Great job so far and we've been conceptualising the idea of speaker and voice, but now it's time to apply those thoughts to a poem and we're gonna be analysing a poet's use of speaker and voice.

So in your additional materials, there is a copy of Owen Sheers' poem, "Not Yet My Mother." I would like you to read that poem.

All right, so pause the video, read through that poem independently and press play when you've done that.

All right, welcome back.

Some excellent independent reading there.

Now, over to you.

See if you can summarise that poem in one sentence.

If you've got a partner, you can try and work and create a joint summary.

But don't worry if you're working by yourself, you can just think through this independently.

How would you summarise what happens in that poem in one sentence? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you think you have a summary.

Well done.

I can hear some great understanding of the poem there.

You might have said something similar to this.

"The speaker finds a photograph of their mother in her youth and reflects on what they can see in the photograph while hinting at the change motherhood caused." Okay.

Well done if you've got something similar to that.

So what I want you to think about now is the nature of the speaker and the voice in Sheers' "Not Yet My Mother." So questions I want you to ask yourself: Which narrative voice does Sheers use? Who is the speaker? Who are they talking to? And do we hear any other voices in the poem? All right, over to you for this one.

If you've got a partner, you can work through this as a pair, discussing with them.

Otherwise, you can just think through this independently.

You may even want to make a few notes.

All right, pause the video, think through these questions, and press play when you have some answers.

Welcome back.

Let's see how you got on with that, shall we? So which narrative voice does Sheers use? Well, well done if you spotted this as a first-person narrative.

We see the pronouns I in there, so we know we're hearing this poem from the perspective of a speaker.

But who is that speaker? Well, well done if you said that was a child or the child.

And who are they talking to? Well, well done if you identified they were talking to their mother.

So do we hear any other voices in the poem? For example, the mother's? No.

We only hear the child's voice.

Well done if you managed to identify all of that in the poem.

All right, let's check, see how we're getting on then.

Which of the following statements are true of the speaker and voice in Sheers' "Not Yet My Mother"? Is it A, we hear a dialogue between the child and mother throughout the poem? Is it B, we hear the child speaking to the mother throughout the poem? Or is it C, we hear the mother speaking to the child throughout the poem? Pause the video, select the right answer, and press play when you are ready to find out if you've got it right.

Really well done if you got that as B.

Yes, we are hearing the child's perspective, the child's voice speaking to their mother.

So now let's consider the speaker and voice of the poem in a bit more detail.

So we know that the speaker is directly addressing their mother in the poem, but what's the effect of this? When you pause the video, have a think and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

Did you say something similar to what we can see on the screen? It implies a close relationship between the speaker and their mother.

It really stressed that the speaker is trying to show to their mother that they understand how motherhood changed them, or at least they're beginning to understand and they really want their mother to understand just how understanding they're being.

But we don't actually hear the mother's voice in the poem.

Why do you think that's significant? Pause the video.

Have a think and press play when you've got some answers that you're ready to share.

I wonder if you said something like this, the lack of voice of the mother could imply her lack of agency.

It could potentially represent how the mother had lost part of her identity and her agency through motherhood.

Maybe.

Okay? When she becomes a parent, suddenly, her focus of her life is her child and she loses a sense of self, perhaps.

Question, these are our interpretations, but we're linking this to this idea of lack of agency because we're not hearing her voice.

Fantastic if you said something similar to that.

Now I want us to consider the connection between speaker and voice and the tone in the poem.

So I always think about what the following quotations suggest about the mother's life before having a child.

"You at 17, smiling, your legs were still the long shins of a boy's." What do these suggest about the mother's life before having a child? Pause, have a think and discuss with a partner, if you wish.

Press play when you are ready to move on.

Some great ideas there.

I really wanna shine a light on some of the fantastic things I heard.

Well done if you said something similar to this, the emphasis on smiling could suggest that this is a surprise to the speaker.

Perhaps they find it really hard to imagine their mother before she became their mother.

And the fact that it takes the speaker a moment to realise that it actually is a mother could suggest that their expression and maybe even her body has changed so much over the course of the years.

Let's try and now consider the connection between structure and voice in the poem.

So each stanza in the poem is end-stopped.

The first ends with the word mother and the final one with child.

How might these structural connect to the voice of the poem and the tone as we've discussed? Pause a video, have a think, or discuss if you've got a partner and press play when you've got some ideas you're willing to share.

Some really interesting ideas there.

It can be tricky talking about structure, but it's so much easier if we can link these to other features of the poem.

So linking structure to the voice will hopefully allow us to be more confident in speaking about structure.

I wonder if you said something like this.

Perhaps the structure, coupled with the fact that we don't hear from the mother's voice, creates a reflective tone where the speaker realises that their mother has lost part of their agency and it's the child, them, that has taken precedence over them.

So remember that point that we said about how when the mother has children, her priorities might have to change, we can link this to the idea of the fact that the beginning of the poem, or sorry, the first stanza ends with the word mother and the end of the poem ends with child.

All of this, and the fact that we don't hear the mother's voice, creates this sense of a loss of agency on behalf of the mother.

True or false then.

We only hear one voice in the poem.

Is that true or is that false? Pause video, have a think, and press play when you've got the right answer.

Well done if you said that was true.

Let's justify that now, shall we? Is it the fact that we only hear the mother's voice could reflect the influence that the mother has over the child's identity? Or is it B, the fact that we only hear the child's voice could reflect the fact that the mother's identity has been consumed by motherhood? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you're ready to find out which answer is correct.

Yeah, great job if you said B.

We're hearing the child's voice and the lack of the mother's voice could suggest that her identity or she has maybe lost some of her agency over her identity.

These are great ideas and inferences.

All right, over to you now to write an answer to the question.

How does Sheers use poetic voice to convey the speaker's attitude towards his mother? Things you might want to consider, the conversational tone.

What does this suggest about the relationship between mother and child? The singular voice of the child throughout the poem.

And think about some of the wider messages Sheers might be trying to say about motherhood.

What commentary might he be making? On the right-hand side of the screen you can see a checklist.

This is a nice little checklist you can use to make sure your answer is thorough enough.

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

Welcome back.

Really great effort there and it was good to see you writing with such confidence about speakers and voice.

All right, let's have a read of Sofia's answer and let's think about where she's met the success criteria.

Sofia wrote, "Sheers' choice to have the speaker talking directly to their mother implies a close bond between them and his understanding of how important their relationship is.

However, the fact that we don't hear the mother's voice, coupled with the repetition of "you at seventeen smiling" could hint at the speaker's realisation that the mother sacrificed part of her identity in order to bring him into the world." Let's compare this to our checklist, shall we? Have they compared the importance of voice? Yes.

Do they use evidence from the text? Yes.

Do they make inferences? Yes they do.

Do they use tentative language to show that these are inferences and we cannot say these things for certain? Well, yes they do.

And did they consider some bigger ideas? And they do.

They really finish with this idea that mother, the mother in this poem but many mothers suffer and sacrifice part of their identities when they become parents.

Why don't you take a moment now to check your work against the success criteria.

And if there are any of these sections you've not managed to meet, well, why don't you use Sofia's work to help you embed that into your response? All right, pause the video and reflect on your own work and press play when you are done.

All right, fantastic work today.

On the screen you can see a summary of everything that we have learned.

Let's quickly go through that together.

The speaker is different to the poet.

A poet sometimes writes from the perspective of a speaker, rather than only from their own experiences.

You can make inferences based on the speaker and voice of a poem, and some poems have a conversational tone, which really help us to develop a personal connection with the reader.

All right, thank you so much for joining me today.

I hope to see you in one of our lessons again soon.

Have a great day.

Bye-Bye.