1. Poetry Session Aims Learning objectives:
To demonstrate and identify how a writer effects the reader:
The importance of word choice, word order and syntax.
The importance of structure in writing in all forms
To explore
Rhythm, pace, style, voice, tone, mood.
To recap and further explore simile and metaphor.
To continue to explore theme and its importance
To experiment with form – poetry
To help with word choice, syntax (metre and stanza) – structure,
To practise reading work aloud that will also help with punctuation and sentence structure

2. Students must know:
•what they will be doing – reading, discussing and writing a poem or prose using the stimulus and shared learning. Discussing the meanings of words and the effect they have on the reader.
•how they’ll be doing it: through reading, discussion and experimental writing – plus further reading (independent learning) .
•what’s coming next: to read other literature and understand the implicit and explicit meanings of words and wider meanings of text e.g. social and historical context. To illustrate in their own writing the use of words and wider meaning of text
•what’s expected of them: to engage and experiment with the exercise. To understand the implicit meanings of words and the effect they have on a reader. To use the language and terminology in their own analysis and commentaries/ responses to text.
•how they can succeed: through challenging cliché, understanding the effect words have on readers, why writers choose certain words

3. Is this a poem?
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

4. Is this a poem?
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
Without the punctuation?
Is this a poem? How could we make it into a poem?

5. BLACKOUT POETRY
Use the newspaper. It’s cheap, they make a new one every day, there’s a huge variety of material in a single paper, and people won’t whine or scold you for “ruining” a book.
Loosen up.
When you’re in blackout poetry mode, don’t read the articles as you normally would. Look at the words as raw material. Toggle between part of one article and part of another, looking for words (and images they suggest) that you can turn into something completely different from the topics of the stories. You’re making fiction out of nonfiction.
Set a time limit. (I usually do them on my lunch break or bus ride.)
Some articles won’t inspire you. Move on.
Don’t read the article first.
“I like to think of blackout poems like those old ‘Word Find’ and ‘Word Search’ puzzles we used to do in school — a field of letters with hidden messages to find,” Kleon writes.
Remember that the poem will be read from left to right and top to bottom.

6. Decipher/interpret/untangle the form
Decipher/interpret/untangle the form: sentence structure, line length number of lines, stanzas and number of stanzas, chorus, refrain repeated phrases, lines and stanzas
Couplets/Quatrains/sestets/octaves
Shape/haiku/lyrics/sonnet/ballad
Layout/structure: rhyme scheme, free-verse – punctuation (exclamations, rhetorical question, dashes, colons; end-stopped lines (punctuation at the end of the line)
Enjambment (no punctuation at the end of a line or stanza of the poem)
Students given a copy of the poem as a block of writing; their job is to structure the poem so it makes sense to them and compare and contrast to other and then the original
Write a short commentary on the process, illustrating a knowledge of crafting using the list of language tools.

7. Birdshooting Season Birdshooting season the men make marriages with their guns my father’s house turns macho as from far the hunters gather All night long contentless women stir their brews: hot coffee chocolata, cerassie wrap pone and tie-leaf for tomorrow’s sport. Tonight the men drink white rum neat. In darkness shouldering their packs, their guns, they leave we stand quietly on the doorstep shivering. Little boys longing to grow up birdhunters too little girls whispering: Fly Birds Fly.

8.  Birdshooting Season
Birdshooting season the men
make marriages with their guns
My father’s house turns macho
as from far the hunters gather
All night long contentless women
stir their brews: hot coffee
chocolata, cerassie
wrap pone and tie-leaf
for tomorrow’s sport. Tonight
the men drink white rum neat.
In darkness shouldering
their packs, their guns, they leave
We stand quietly on the
doorstep shivering.  Little boys
longing to grow up birdhunters too
Little girls whispering:
Fly Birds Fly.
Olive Senior

9. Demonstrate an understanding of poetic language and structure.
Critique a number of sources discuss how performance/interactive and multi- media platforms affect the spoken word poetry.
How did you use poetic devices such as imagery and metaphor (figurative language)?
What other techniques have you used: alliteration, rhyme and metre, structure use of punctuation (or not) and visual impact of structure
Mothers of America
Having a coke with you.

10. Now write your own version of each poem
Write your version of Having a coke with you – you can change this to any beverage but the opening line must be Having a _____ with you….
Write a version of Mothers of America - your message to mothers or fathers or both of England.
Present your poem to the class and tell us how you made your decisions. Themes, sounds, words chosen, type of poem, shape inspiration.