1. Battle of the Poets

2. Expert Groups - you will be presenting tomorrow!

3. Powerful verbs and adverbs
Imagery
Students were put into groups and given a poem each to focus on
They had to explore key techniques from the mark scheme and develop an explanation to these
This is setting students up to do battle…
Metaphors
Others
Structure
Context and links

4. Prepare your presentations…

5. Students got into larger groups and presented each other with their poem sheet that they had been working on
By the end, all students had a full booklet of sheets for each poem ready to do battle…

6. Battle of the Poets

7. The battle commenced…
Students were given three poems for the left hand side and three for the right
Students were set a question and had to choose two poets that best fit the answer e.g. ‘Name the poet that created the best metaphor’
This was repeated for 4 rounds on the left and four on the right
Students were then asked to take two out of the three poets through to rounds 9-12.
Another set of questions were asked (this time harder than the first round to open up more discussion)
Students then had to choose 1 out of the 2 poets on either side so they had a final 2 from the starting 6.
One final – much more open – question was posed for discussion and students had to decide which poet was most effective and why…

8. Outcomes
Students ended up understanding the writer’s craft in more detail, being able to justify choices
Students engaged with all poems and not just their original preferred choices – which is important for revision and their exam
Discussions aided more developed understanding with verbal application of key terminology required for the exam
Students had a revision resource that they can use again and again
Students were fully engaged – competitive element
This could work well for most subjects and is pretty easy to set up – I would advise allowing a few lessons for something like this