Poetry Cluster - Love and Relationships - Year 8 English

Summary of topic:

• Understanding the structure of poems in the collection
• Writing about the differences and similarities between poems
• Understanding the contextual factors for poets such as: Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
  Seamus Heaney, Percy Byssche Shelley, Charles Causley, Simon Armitage, Lord Byron, Maura Dooley, Charlotte Mew, Cecil Day-Lewis, Owen Sheers, Daljit Nagra, Andrew Waterhouse and Carol Ann Duffy
• Understanding how to vary sentence functions in my writing

Newspaper articles:

Cluster Overview: Love and Relationships
Love and Relationships - AQA GCSE Poetry Cluster
Working-with-the-Poetry-Anthology-Unseens_Samples-Pages.pdf

Video clips and documentaries:

Which 'Love and Relationships' Poems Compare Well?
Porphyria's Lover: Detailed Analysis for AQA GCSE English Lit Students
English Literature: Love and Relationships Poetry Section - YouTube
My Own A* Answer (36/36) to Relationships Poetry (Mr Bruff Classics Vol.6) ​
Unconditional love: Quickfire Quotes for AQA Comparative poetry+link

Further reading:

AQA Poetry Anthology Literature Paper 2 Guide Book

Other:

Here are possible question styles from an AQA cluster unit (not the poems used in this unit of work):
AQA Poetry - Past Papers (A) Relationships Cluster / (B) Unseen Poetry 

Assessment/Test and answer sheet:

KPIs:

8 - Understanding the context of the poems
11- Writing about the similarities and differences between texts
16- Using a range of sentence functions accurately in my writing

Typical questions for the assessment in this unit:

How does Hardy/ Causley/ Duffy (for example) show the theme of… in this poem?
How is man’s relationship with… presented in this poem?
How does the poet use his/her poem to convey human emotion in this poem?