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Year 7

Performing our poems about place and home

I can perform my poem with confidence and use different performance techniques to convey emotion.

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New
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Year 7

Performing our poems about place and home

I can perform my poem with confidence and use different performance techniques to convey emotion.

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Share activities with pupils
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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Connecting with the audience when reading our poems can make our story more powerful.
  2. We can use our body language, posture and eye contact to convey certain emotions.
  3. We can vary the pitch and pace of our voice to convey different emotions and influence the tone of our poem.
  4. You can trick yourself into feeling more confident about a performance through deep breathing and smiling.

Keywords

  • Pitch - pitch refers to the relative highness and lowness of voice when speaking

  • Pace - when delivering a monologue, pace refers to the speed at which you are saying the words

  • Tone - tone refers to the general mood or feeling

  • Body language - body language is the movements or positions of your body that show other people how you are feeling

Common misconception

As long as the content of a poem is good, the performance will automatically be good.

Performance requires practise in a unique set of skills which are worth practising as a good performance can enhance the poem content.


To help you plan your year 7 english lesson on: Performing our poems about place and home, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Model how you would perform a poem to students to show them what a good performance looks like and ease their nerves. You may also want to decide whether students will perform to the whole class or in small groups for Learning Cycle 3.
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Teacher tip
content-guidance

Content guidance

  • Depiction or discussion of sensitive content
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Supervision

Adult supervision recommended

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Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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Starter quiz

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6 Questions

Q1.
Poems are written to be ...
studied.
Correct answer: read aloud.
analysed.
Q2.
What is a performance?
something that people read
Correct answer: something that people can watch or listen to
something private
Q3.
What does it mean to project your voice?
to speak so the front row of an audience can hear you
to shout
Correct answer: to speak so the whole room can hear you
Q4.
What does a full stop in a poem indicate?
Correct answer: when to pause
which emotion to convey in your speech
that you should speak in a high pitch
Q5.
A fast pace in a poem can convey a sense of ...
safety.
Correct answer: excitement.
sadness.
Q6.
Which is true of eye contact when performing to an audience?
you should stare at the audience
you should look at the audience
Correct answer: you should scan the room and give eye contact to various different members

Exit quiz

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6 Questions

Q1.
What shows confidence when performing?
closed body language
Correct answer: open body language
Correct answer: good eye contact
fidgeting
Q2.
What is pace?
how high or low your voice goes
Correct answer: how fast or slow you speak
how sad or happy your voice is
Q3.
What is pitch?
the extent to which you look at your audience
Correct answer: the variations in how high or low your voice goes
your facial expressions
Q4.
What effect might speaking in a high pitch have?
conveys a sense of sadness
Correct answer: conveys a sense of excitement
conveys a sense of anger
Q5.
Which of these techniques can help you feel more confidence when getting ready to perform?
shallow breathing
closed body language
Correct answer: deep breathing
Q6.
Why is it important to vary tone when performing a poem?
Correct answer: poems ought to convey emotion
poems have to be read quickly
your audience won't comprehend what you are saying otherwise