Poetry Pictures

This lesson is one of three parts that won Conor the innovative lesson competition. Conor Sneyd has just finished his third year of studying English at Trintiy College. He's always loved English, because he's always loved reading, and he thinks that if Shakespeare was still alive he'd be annoyed that everyone takes him so seriously.

The aim of this lesson is to give students a way of summarising a poem, of picking out the most important quotes, and of remembering it better

The trickiest thing about Leaving Cert poetry is the number of poems which students have to learn. For example, for Higher Level, they have to prepare at least 5 poets (as only 4 out of 8 come up on the paper, so if they prepare less than 5 there’s no guarantee that any of the ones they’ve prepared will come up), and it is recommended that they prepare 4 to 6 poems per poet. This means that they’ll be learning a total of 20 – 30 poems, which is A LOT.

This is made even more difficult by the fact that poetry tends to be very abstract, and so it’s often hard for students to remember exactly what happens in a poem, and to be able to pick out what the important bits are.

Something I’ve found works well in making poetry easier for students is, with each poem we do, to have them identify the three scenes they think are most important in the poem, to draw a picture of each one, and to pick out a quote for each one. This makes them summarise the poem and identify the key quotes, and also gives them a visual presentation of the poem, which can really help them remember it.

For example for “The Tuft of Flowers” by Robert Frost is a long and tricky poem, about a rural worked whose solitary work makes him feel lonely, until he spots a butterfly which leads him to some flowers which someone else chose to leave standing instead of cutting them down, reminding him of the existence of other human beings and making him feel less lonely.

Stickmen Shakespeare

This lesson is one of three parts that won Conor the innovative lesson competition. Conor Sneyd has just finished his third year of studying English at Trintiy College. He's always loved English, because he's always loved reading, and he thinks that if Shakespeare was still alive he'd be annoyed that everyone takes him so seriously.

The aim of this lesson is to revise characters and themes in Shakespeare, to present information in a visual way, to get students actively involved in the lesson and to have a bit of fun with it

There is a lot going in a Shakespeare play, for example Hamlet, and it can be hard for students to remember the details of who exactly every character is, and what exactly they do. One way of revising characters and themes which I’ve found works well is by drawing everything on the board – simple drawings with stickmen. When drawing a character I ask the class things like what expression I should give them, and why – eg. giving Hamlet a sad face, as he’s sad that his father is dead and his mother has remarried so soon, or giving him an angry face, as he wants revenge on the man who murdered his father; or what they should be wearing or holding – eg. Claudius should be holding a bottle of poison because he poisoned Old Hamlet and tries to poison Hamlet during the duel, Laertes should be holding a sword because he’s trying to kill Hamlet; or who they should be standing beside – eg. Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius should be together as they’re all part of the same family.