Top Tips for Teaching AQA Poetry
Feedback from Poetry Live! Teachers’ Day
Assessment Objectives
A01 - respond critically, sensitively and in a detailed way to the text;
A02 - comment on how writers use form, structure and language to contribute to
meaning;
A03 - explore relationships and comparisons, selecting and evaluating relevant
material.
o All these A0s are of equal value. Therefore, all need to be shown in essays.
o The skills needed and tested in English and Literature are the same.
o It is only necessary to do one Cluster for English. There will always be a question on each Cluster.
Top Teaching Tips
o The key poems are the only ones you must do.
o Psychologically, it can be of benefit to put all the key poems on one A3 piece of paper, and give it to them at the start. This is their ‘text’ and avoids the endless feeling of using the anthology.
o All poems should be themed in some way – it could be in terms of content or structure. Never do them singly.
o You should not do 12 poems in massive detail. This will give the students too much detail. An able student may only get a C if s/he has packed far too much information in and has not included a personal response.
o There is no need to decode the meaning of every line. Students should focus on the lines they do understand, not the ones they don’t. The best lines are the ones they find interesting.
o ‘PEE’ is good for moving students from a D to a C. However, it has severe limitations for higher ability students and can hold them back from achieving. To get the higher marks students also need to explore, develop, analyse and evaluate rather than just explain. Provide examples and model.
o Comparison grids can be a good idea, but the danger is that if they plan in the exam using a grid, they can have too much information. As mentioned earlier, the key is to write a lot about a little.
o If we want children to develop their extended writing, we need to model it.
Top Tips for Teaching Thinking Skills
o Do not tell them what the poem is about- this limits their thinking.
o It can be useful to give students some poems and ask them to find what they have in common and to find one line they like and explain why. Even lower ability students will be able to do this to some level.
o To get the high marks students must learn to take risks. They should not be afraid of coming up with a new idea in the exam. As long as they can back it up, it is irrelevant what we think.
o It is vital that students (and perhaps teachers?) don’t think in terms of right and wrong. To get the highest marks, a personal response is required.
o Good ways to encourage independent thinking is to give them Blake’s poem ‘The Sick Rose’ and get them to come up with different meanings in groups. They then choose the one that is most convincing and explain why.
o A more structured way to make students think is to give them two poems and read it out loud 5 times. Each time they must underline certain things such as: action verbs, lists, imagery, senses, mood - mark where the mood changes.
o What line gives the feeling of the poem? Use this question generate discussion.
Top Exam Tips
o There is no requirement to compare the 4 poems.
o There is no requirement to balance the four poems. You could write a small paragraph about the final poem and still get an A*.
o It is really important to show different skills in the essay i.e. there is no point in writing a lot about A01, and ignore the other AOs.
o In the exam they should answer poetry first and then prose. There are more marks for the poems, and students often get too absorbed in the prose.
o Unless they are purposeful, introductions are a waste of time, better to launch in than waste time.
o The best answers talk a lot about a little. To get an A*, you need to unpack and unpack lines. It is possible to write nearly a page about 2 words and an essay on 2/3 points. This is what they are looking for, as opposed to writing a little about a lot.
Information courtesy of Jo Gruder (Townsend School)