Throughout this text based, 5 session English planning, pupils experiment with personification and explore the effective language used in a variety of Sonnets and other poems. Through performance, graffiti art and film clips, they develop language and ideas for their own poetic journey across the landscape.

All aspects of poetry from the national curriculum in reading, spoken language and writing composition will be covered across the full set Au1-Su2.

National curriculum skills for this unit:

Spoken language:

• Listen and respond
• Ask relevant questions
• Build vocabulary
• Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations
• Speak audibly and fluently

Reading comprehension:

• Identify and discuss themes and conventions
• Make comparisons within and across poems
• Learn poetry by heart
• Prepare poems and plays for performance
• Check sense, discuss understanding and explore meaning of words in context
• Ask questions to improve understanding
• Identify how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning
• Evaluate authors’ language choice
• Explain and discuss understanding of reading

Writing composition:

• Note and develop initial ideas, drawing on reading and research
• Enhance meaning through selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary
• Describe settings, characters and atmosphere
• Use organisational and presentational devices to structure text
• Propose changes to vocabulary, grammar and punctuation to enhance effects and clarify meaning
• Perform own compositions using appropriate intonation, volume and movement

For schools that use Pathways to Write, this unit aligns with the summer 2 set 1 unit.

Poems for this unit can be found within the unit and in Poems from a Green and Blue Planet edited by Sabrina Mahfouz.