How will I be assessed? Preparing for Year 9 GCSE Poetry Assessment Assessment Objectives AO1 AO2 AO3 Wording Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to: maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations. Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meaning and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate. Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written. Worth thinking about How well do I know what happens, what people say, do, etc. in each poem? What do I think about the key ideas in the poems? How can I support my viewpoint in a really convincing way? What are the best quotations to use and when should I use them? What specific things do the poets do? What choices has each poet made? Why this particular word, phrase or image here? Why does this change occur at this point? What effects do these choices create optimism. Pessimism, ambiguity? What can I learn about society from the poems? What do they tell me about stereotypes and prejudice, for example? What was/ is society like for the poets? Can I see it reflected in their poems?
How to read and study a poem When you read a study a poem, or a set of poems, there are a number of key areas you need to explore. You need to engage with the poem to respond to questions intelligently and thoughtfully. Key aspects to consider include: 1. What the narrative of the poem is it s story or the experience it describes. Does the poem describe something particular that happens? Is it a personal story or a public one? What actually happens? NOTE: Sometimes poems don t seem to tell a story at all, but all poems are about something, however small or apparently insignificant. 2. The voice (or voices) and viewpoint. Is the poem told in the first person, and is the voice intimate or distant? Who does it address? 3. The message and/or theme of the poem. What is the main idea running through the poem? Are there other related ideas? 4. The poem s language features, or poetic techniques used by the poet. What methods or skills does the poet use to create effects? For example: poets often use enjambment because it carries the thought on from one line to another. 5. The poem s structure and organisation. Is the poem written in a particular form, such as a sonnet or a monologue? Are the verses regular (with the same number of lines in each verse)? Is there a rhyme scheme? 6. The openings and endings. Does it provide a resolution to a problem? Does the reader feel something is unresolved? Does the ending return to the beginning to create a circular effect? Does it change the readers understanding of the poem?
7. Patterns of sound and rhythm. What sounds are created through the repetition of letters, such as beginning letters in alliteration, or vowels in assonance? What is the movement of the poem like? E.g. Is it a bouncy comic poem, a slow lament or a sad song? Does the pace change? 8. Contexts and settings. What influenced the poet? Do you know the historic period in which the poem was written? Is it a period referred to or expressed in the poem, such as the speaker recalling a memory from the past? Can you tell when or where the poem was set? Apply these questions to these poems in your Anthology before the exam on Monday 11 th June. Cecil Day Lewis Walking Away 15 Seamus Heaney Follower 17 Simon Armitage Mother, any distance 18 Carol Ann Duffy Before You Were Mine 19 Use the BBC Btesize GSCE English Literature website. You need AQA Poetry. Check you are working on the poems in your anthology. (Love and Relationships)
Glossary of terms Try and apply these language terms when you analyse the poems. connotation an additional meaning attached to a word in specific circumstances, i.e. what it suggests or implies couplet end rhyme enjambment extended metaphor free verse half rhyme (para-rhyme) idiom imagery internal rhyme metaphor monologue motif paradox pun two lines of poetry that are paired rhyme at the end of lines of poetry when a line runs on toe the next line without pause, carrying the thought with it in poetry, a metaphor that continues some aspect of the image, it may continue into the next line or throughout the poem a form of poetry, verses with regular rhythm or pattern, though thy may contain some patterns such as rhyme or repetition where the line at the end of a line has the same consonants but not the same vowel sound, so not a full rhyme an everyday expression or a common saying descriptive language that uses images to make actions, objects and characters more vivid in the reader s mind when words rhyme in the middle of and at the end of a line when one thing is used to describe another to create a striking or unusual image where a single voice addresses the reader or audience a repeated theme or idea a statement of group of words that contradicts itself plays on two or more meanings in a word usually
for comic effect quatrain quintain rhyme scheme rhyming couplet sestet sibilant sonnet stanza symbol tercet four lines of verse five lines of verse the pattern of a rhyme in a poem a couplet that rhymes a verse of six lines a hissing sound in speech made with an s or sh fourteen line verse with a rhyming couplet at the end a group or pattern of lines forming a verse something that represents something else, usually with meaning that are widely known e.g. a dove as a symbol for peace a verse of three lines