>LEARN ABOUT THE LINKSBETWEEN POETRY AND MUSIC

>IDENTIFY POETIC TECHNIQUESIN SONG LYRICS

>UNDERSTAND THE TONE OF ASONG BY ANALYSING

KEY LYRICS

YOU WILL NEED…>SOME CHOICE SONG LYRICS

>>POETRY GRID SHEETSA COMPUTER AND INTERNET

CONNECTION FOR ACCESS TOWWW.WORDLE.NET

>POST IT NOTES

TODAY YOU

WILL...

Encouraging them to analyse music thatthey love is a brilliant way of getting

students excited about poetry, says the

National Literacy Trust’s Susie Musgrove…

34 www.teachsecondary.com

LESSONPLAN

GOING FORA SONG

At the National Literacy Trust we’vejust run a fantastic poetry competitionin partnership with the Authors’Licensing and Collecting Society,which you may have read about in theFeb/March issue of Teach Secondary.The challenge, called Write On, was allabout engaging young people withpoetry and making it relevant to them.

We worked with some Englishteachers to put together a series oflesson ideas exploring ways to do this– and applying learners’ critical skillsto song lyrics proved to be as effectivea method as it was popular.NB: this lesson assumes that studentsalready have an understanding ofpoetry and poetic techniques.

As students enter the room, projectthe lyrics of the chorus of the songMOSH by Eminem on yourwhiteboard, using the heading “War Poetry”:

Come along follow me as I leadthrough the darknessAs I provide just enough spark that we need to proceedCarry on, give me hope, give me strengthCome with me and I won't steer you wrongPut your faith and your trust as Iguide us through the fogTo the light at the end of the tunnelWe gonna fight, we gonnacharge, we gonna stomp, wegonna marchThrough the swamp, we gonnamosh through the marshTake us right through the doors

Ask your students to guess the titleand author of the ‘poem’, promptingthem with questions about the toneand subject of the poem and thelanguage used. Then reveal theanswer, if they don't themselves. Ifyou’re not sure about theappropriateness of Eminem in yourclassroom you could use an

STARTER ACTIVITY alternative, such as I Will Wait byMumford and Sons or Set Fire to theRain by Adele and use the heading‘Love Poetry’. This activity should getyour students thinking about thesimilarities between song lyrics and poetry.

+ KEY RESOURCEDiscover free resources to supportyour students’ literacy skills atcollinsreading.com with specialoffers, ideas to support your teaching,free samples, competitions and muchmore. An exciting blog providessuggestions for engaging andmotivating students to read,alongside articles on individual titles,including The Hobbit, War Horse,Private Peaceful, SkulduggeryPleasant and many more.You can also discover more aboutRead On – the brand new series tosupport struggling readers to reachLevel 4, which includes titles bybestselling authors, CatherineMacPhail, Benjamin Zephaniah and Alan Gibbons.

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HAD WE BUTWORDS ENOUGHAND RHYME?Hand out the lyrics of the songused in the starter activity (you mayneed to censor some of the morecolourful language if you’re usingMOSH!), divide the class into smallgroups and ask them to analysethe song as they would a poem,identifying key language andimagery as well as thinking aboutthe subject and structure of thelyrics. You can find a poetry gridhandout at the Trust’s websiteliteracytrust.org.uk/write_on thatyour students can use to jot downtheir thoughts. Ask the groups tofeed back on what they havediscussed and what they think theoverall tone of the poem is.

MAIN ACTIVITIES

Project the following quote on your whiteboard from Jay-Z’s book, Decoded:

“hip-hop lyrics — not just my lyrics,but those of every great MC — are poetry if you look at themclosely enough.”

Ask your students whether theyagree with this statement, and why.Steer them towards thinking aboutthe techniques used (repetition,rhyme, alliteration, strong imageryetc). Ask a student or TA to scribethe ideas on the board around theoutside of the quote.

SHALL I COMPARETHEE TO A HIP-HOP HIT?

1

INFO BAR

2

As a final activity, get your students to identify some songs that they know and categorise them by their tone(melancholy, angry, joyful) and message (for example war, love, political), justifying why they have chosen togroup the songs in this way. Students can jot down their ideas on Post-it notes and stick them up on thewhiteboard as they leave the room.

SUMMARY

I WANDEREDLONELY AS A WORD CLOUD…While your students arecompleting activity two, go towordle.net (I’m sure you’re allfamiliar with this website, but forthe uninitiated, Wordle is a greatonline tool that generates a wordcloud from a piece of text, givinggreater prominence to words thatappear more frequently).

Paste in the lyrics that yourstudents are analysing to create aword cloud of the song, whichshould produce a great visualillustration of how strongvocabulary and imagery, and toolslike repetition of words can beused to convey the tone andmessage of a song, just as theycan with poetry.

3

HOME LEARNING+ Challenge students to find asong that has meaningful lyrics(Gangnam Style anyone?!) andcreate their own word cloud onWordle, which they can thenannotate with some analysis ofthe vocabulary and imagery andwhat this tells them about thetone and message of the song.

ENGLISH | KS3

Susie Musgrove isschools officer at theNational Literacy Trust.She runs excitingcompetitions everyterm to inspire childrento get involved inactivities to improvetheir literacy. These arecompletely free andopen to all UK schools,and every one iscomplemented by lotsof free resources forteachers and librarians.Find out more atliteracytrust.org.uk/competitions, and followthe National LiteracyTrust on Twitter@Literacy_Trust.

+ ADDITIONALRESOURCESYOU CAN FIND LOTS OF OTHER POETRYRESOURCES AND LESSON IDEAS ATLITERACYTRUST.ORG.UK/WRITE_ON.ALTHOUGH THE COMPETITION IS OVER,THESE RESOURCES HAVE LOTS OF GREATACTIVITIES AND IDEAS THAT YOU CAN PULL OUT AND USE TOCOMPLEMENT YOUR TEACHING. THERE’SALSO A GUIDE FOR TEACHERS ANDLIBRARIANS ON RUNNING A POETRYSLAM IN SCHOOL – ANOTHER GREATWAY TO ENGAGE YOUR STUDENTS WITHTHE WORLD OF POETRY.

+ ABOUT THE EXPERT

+ STRETCH THEM FURTHER+ TEST YOUR STUDENTS’UNDERSTANDING OF THE TONE OF APOEM BY ASKING THEM TO SET IT TOAPPROPRIATE MUSIC. LEARNERS MUSTTAKE A CHOSEN POEM, AND USING APROGRAMME SUCH AS WINDOWSMOVIEMAKER OR ANIMOTO, PREPARE AVIDEO PRESENTATION OF THE POEMWITH AN APPROPRIATE SONG, I.E. ONETHAT REPRESENTS THE TONE OF THEPOEM, RUNNING THROUGHOUT.(A NOTE ON COPYRIGHT: THE VIDEOSPRODUCED SHOULD BE USEDINTERNALLY ONLY, AND NOT UPLOADEDTO SHARING SITES AS THEY MAY USEMUSIC AND IMAGES THAT ARECOPYRIGHT PROTECTED.)

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