(Short) English Unit / King John’s Christmas
A.A. Milne /
Outcomes:
A whole-class performance of the poem King John’s Christmas
and
A personal response/review of King John’s Christmas / Resources:
King John’s Christmas by A.A Milne[1]
Duration: Three days[2] / Unit Objectives:
Develop positive attitudes to reading by increasing their familiarity wit fiction from the English literary heritage
Prepare poems to be read aloud and performed, using appropriate intonation and volume so that the meaning is clear
Participate in conversations about texts that are read to them and those they can read for themselves, building on their own and others’ ideas and challenging views courteously
Plan, draft, write, edit and evaluate written work to produce outcomes of a high standard
Session / Learning Objectives / Lesson Content & Organisation / Differentiation & Assessment[3]
1 / To read and discuss fiction from the English literary heritage
To participate in conversations about texts, building on their own and others’ ideas and challenging views courteously / Read the poem aloud to the class all the way through, accompanied by the EH Shepherd drawings on the whiteboard.[4]
Ask the children to read and discuss the poem briefly in pairs, summarising the story. Take feedback.
As a class, work through the poem stanza by stanza, discussing the poem.[5] You might discuss:
- The genre and structure of the poem[6]
- The style of the poem and its humour[7]
- The story itself
- Any unfamiliar vocabulary (supercilious, gat) or funny turns of phrase (had his little ways, a prey to hopes and fears)
- Some technical language[8]
-
Children can keep notes about the discussion or make annotations directly onto the poem.[9]
Set homework: To write a personal response to King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne. They can use the notes they made in class to support them.[10]
Finish the lesson by asking if they have have enjoyed reading the poem and asking pupils to explain one thing they’ve learned this lesson to the children on their table. / Target questions at different groups/individuals to ensure participation.
2 / To develop written work, tailoring improvements to needs of the reader
Success Criteria might include:
Organise texts into paragraphs to distinguish between different information
Use adverbs and conjunctions to establish cohesion within paragraphs
Clarify meaning and point of view by using varied sentence structure / Collect homework in and give brief feed back.[11] Children can swap work with a partner, read and then give feedback to one another.
Whole class teaching of one or more key elements of English.[12]
Provide pupils with opportunity to edit their writing, adding additional content or improving clarity, making necessary secretarial changes to spelling, grammar, presentation etc.
While pupils are feeding back to one another and editing their own work, the teacher can work one-to-one with pupils identified as needing support.
Work is collected in for detailed written feedback.[13]
3 / To read and discuss fiction from the English literary heritage
To prepare poems to be read aloud and performed, using appropriate intonation and volume so that the meaning is clear / As a class, recap the story of the poem.
Activity: Push the desks back or go to the hall for a drama/ performance activity. Pupils are to work in five small groups to prepare one section of the poem for performance. They can present their section however they wish, but they must learn and speak the poem aloud.[14]
Run the performance in order together as a class, and provide feedback. Perform again, this time filming the class delivering the poem. Watch back as a class and evaluate.[15]
[1] You can find a copy of the poem in the zipfile on the website. King John’s Christmas comes from Now We are Six, which is a beautiful collection of poems and well-worth having in your classroom.
[2] Longer if you want to spend time redrafting and editing the writing…
[3] We don’t know your children so you’re on your own with this column we’re afraid. This is where you can think about targeting individual children, both to support them and to provide challenge; organising things to fit any groupings you might employ and generally making adaptations to fit your class.
[4] Of course you can start this unit however you wish. The class could read it aloud together or in pairs. However, we think it’s best to read it to them once the entire way through first- it means everyone can listen and enjoy the poem. You can find a PowerPoint of EH Shepherd’s beautiful drawings in the zipfile.
[5] Hmm, as easy as that, eh? Ok, well, there are lots of ways to structure whole-class discussion, and we’re sure you’ve got a way that works for you, but you might want to have a look at our handy section. Generally, when we talk about poetry with classes we try to focus the conversation on the technical aspects of the poem and the themes (or if it’s a narrative poem like this one, the story). It can work well discussing one and then the other, but it seems more natural to talk about both as you go. As always, up to you.
[6] They’ll probably recognise it’s a narrative poem, telling a story. I’m sure they’ll have come across these before. We also like to unpick the rhyming structure, count the syllables in each line- it’s a good way of learning/revising all of those technical terms. They might physically label the lines a/b to identify the pattern.
[7] We’ve found simply asking ‘is this poem funny? Why?’ is enough to start a good discussion here. Generally answers tend to be along the lines of:
‘King John is supposed to be the king, but he behaves like a child in the poem’
‘He wants a ball, and in the end he gets one, but not from Father Christmas, but because it smashes through his window. He should be cross, but he’s happy because his wish has come true!’
‘It sounds funny’- A great answer, if not the most precise. There’s definitely something about the sense of momentum when you read the poem aloud, the rhythm of it and the turns of phrase which makes it sound jolly, happy and well, funny. Sometimes we can overanalyse these things…
[8] We wouldn’t go too mad, but there are a couple of nice opportunities here. Depending on the year group, they’ll probably be able to find an example of alliteration (such as sticky sweets were smeared), but a new term to teach them might be enjambment. You can explain to them that this is where the meaning runs onto across different lines, creating a bit of suspense and giving real momentum to reading it aloud. The lines:
When through the window big and red,
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!
provide a great example of this.
[9] We like it best when they annotate the poem- it’s so quick and easy.
[10] This depends on their age of course. This is a great piece of homework for Y5 or Y6. You might ask Y3 or Y4 to write a review of the poem in class. As always it depends on you and your class. You might want to have a look at our notes on writing a personal response here.
[11] Effective feedback is the one thing that makes children’s writing better. See our section on giving feedback for how we go about it at Shakespeare and More.
[12] This is an opportunity to teach the children one facet of English in a meaningful context. It may be that from the brief feedback you have noticed something that children have not got the hang of yet (this could be anything from writing in full sentences, to using specific types of clauses or punctuation) or it may something more advanced taken from the age-appropriate section of the National Curriculum. Then, when children move onto editing their own work, they can use it. You can find a handy set of ready to lift 2014 NC objectives here.
[13] This is a nice way of saying you get to mark it.
[14] After lots of trial and error, the best way we’ve found for doing this is a process that roughly goes like this:
1. A bit of a chat about what might be important here- a loud, clear delivery, good use of intonation and voice, something interesting to look at and then the real basics- no talking with backs to the audience etc. It’s probably best not to give them too much of a steer at this point or you’ll get five sections that are exactly the same.
2. Send them off in their groups with their sections (you can find a copy of the poem divided into 5 neat sections in the zipfile, but by all means chop it up how you see fit). We recommend keeping this short- ten minutes is enough to come up with a rough idea.
3. Bring them back together and ask them to perform their section stressing that you’re not expecting the finished piece. Take feedback from the class and give plenty yourself. Ask them what they can learn from each other and what they can steal from other groups. Hopefully you’ll have a nice mixture of approaches, perhaps with some groups with one narrator, some where everyone speaks together, some where lines are shared out. If you haven’t got this then you can steer them towards it.
4. Another ten minutes back in their groups making some changes. You can go and support whichever group have all fallen out and can’t agree what to do (heaven forbid that this would happen in your class).
5. Back together for a performance and a bit more feedback.
6. A final ten minutes to run through until it’s polished (without reading from a script- they’ll be complaints, but they can do it!)
[15] It might be that you want to share your performance to an audience (parents, say, or another class). This performance, along with some sections of their personal responses, also makes the basis of a great class assembly.
If the class enjoyed this poem, you might want to read some other A.A Milne poems aloud to the class (Lines and Squares is great) or poems by Hilaire Belloc or Ogden Nash (we especially like Isobel and the Bear).