1. You will be given a poem …
Socratic Listening Challenge Goal: To speak and listen with confidence to express sophisticated ideas.
Part One: Preparation
You will be given a poem …
As best you can, you challenge is to formulate an answer for discussion for each of the following questions:
What is the subject of this poem?
What do you think is the best line of this poem? Why do you think that?
What do you notice about the way it’s structured? Is there rhyme/rhythm/verses etc. Why might the poet have structured it this way?
What parts of the poem are strange and difficult to understand?
What point do you think the poet is trying to make through this poem?
What do you notice about the words / phrases / language features of the poem?

2. What is the subject of this poem?
What do you think is the best line of this poem? Why do you think that?
What do you notice about the way it’s structured? Is there rhyme/rhythm/verses etc. Why might the poet have structured it this way?
What parts of the poem are strange and difficult to understand?
What point do you think the poet is trying to make through this poem?
What do you notice about the words / phrases / language features of the poem?

3. Socratic Listening: Part two - performances
As each group performs the discussion your group will assess a different aspect
Who does the best job of …
Asking questions to other group members
Leading the discussion
Using a wide vocabulary
Using examples to support their ideas
Making expanded, developed comments
Projecting their voice clearly and confidently

4. Arms and the Boy
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads, Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads, Or give him cartridges whose fine zinc teeth, Are sharp with sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; And God will grow no talons at his heels, Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

5. Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? -Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

6. Disabled
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees, And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,- In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands. All of them touch him like some queer disease.
There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace; He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, After the matches, carried shoulder-high. It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, He thought he'd better join.-He wonders why. Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts, That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years. Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt, And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes, And do what things the rules consider wise, And take whatever pity they may dole. Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. How cold and late it is! Why don't they come And put him into bed? Why don't they come

7. Futility
Move him into the sun- Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds- Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all

8. The Last Laugh
'Oh! Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died. Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed, The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain, vain! Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut! Tut-tut! And the Big Gun guffawed.
Another sighed,-'O Mother, -Mother, - Dad!' Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead. And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud Leisurely gestured,-Fool! And the splinters spat, and tittered.
'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood, Till slowly lowered, his whole faced kissed the mud. And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned; Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned; And the Gas hissed.

9. Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

10. Achievement Standard 2.4
Aim: To be aware of the requirements of the Std
To begin to be able to identify the effects of poetic techniques
Admin: Complete Barriers to learning sheet
First Owen Poem: Dulce Et Decorum Est
Reading and Discussion
Formative Assessment – how well do you know your poetic terms?

11. Poetic Terms Assessment
Find, underline/highlight and label two of each of the following from the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est
Simile
Metaphor
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
Assonance
Consonance
Imagery

12. Bring the Poem to Life
Your challenge is to present ‘Dulce’ as a series of five tableau or freeze frames
Example
You have 10 minutes to organise yourselves
One half of the class will perform, whilst the second half is the audience, then we will swap.
Prize fro the best group performance.

13. Dulce Analysis
Goal: to be able to identify the effects created by techniques Owen Uses
To revise essay paragraph structure
Homework feedback
Dulce – Questions
Shared writing – the PEE chain
Achieving excellence – higher order skills expanding, exploring layers of meaning, cross referencing, synthesising

14. Dulce et Decorum Est (It is sweet and fitting to die for your country)
Understanding the techniques used
There are two similes in the opening lines. Underline them and annotate what impression this creates of the soldiers
What mood is created by the sounds of the words sludge and trudge?
Optional challenging question: What mood is created by the alliterated ‘ms’ in line 6?
What changes the pace of the poem at line 9? Why does Owen change the pace here?
What do the similes in lines help the reader to imagine?
To which senses does Owen appeal in lines 20 – 25? What do these appeals to the sense help to emphasize?
How does the tone of the poem become like an accusation in the last four lines?

15. Dulce: Essay practice Goal: to revise essay structure and style
For each of your texts, analyse how language techniques helped to create a powerful message.
What are you being asked to do?
How to introduce an exam essay
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, by Wilfred Owen, uses language techniques to communicate the powerful message: that it is absolutely not ‘sweet and honourable to die for your country’.

16. Frequent use of key word: Message
Model SXY Paragraph
The two similes in the opening lines of ‘Dulce et Decrum Est’ (Hereafter ‘Dulce’), begin to establish Owen’s powerful message about the brutal reality of war. He describes the soldiers as, ‘like old beggars under sacks,’ and ‘coughing like hags.’ It is clear the soldiers have been reduced to an horrific condition, they are incredibly fatigued, are sick and are even presented as having aged prematurely. Thus Owen’s message about the harsh reality of war begins with vivid imagery illustrating the terrible condition of the soldiers
Present Tense
A lot about a little
Formal Connectives
Embedded quotations
3rd Person
Frequent use of key word: Message
Point
Example
Analysis

17. Shared Writing For each of your texts, analyse how language techniques helped to create a powerful message.
Owen’s use of imagery, combines with sound devices to make his message yet more powerful, as he describes a comrade dying from a gas attack. The imagery and assonance of, ‘he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,’ and the simile, ‘as under a green sea, I saw him drowning’ are particularly striking. These lines emphasize how sickening the death through gassing was, vividly allowing the reader to see and hear the soldier’s obscene death. Additionally, the colour imagery of the green gas which engulfs the soldier, helps depict the actual colour of the mustard gas used during such attacks.

18. Anthem for Doomed Youth
Goal: To understand the contrast between the presentation of the soldier’s deaths and the dignity they deserve.

19. Anthem
First reading and discussion – what do you think is the point Owen is trying to make through this poem?
Dividing up the images
Letter to Siegfried Sassoon: I wrote Anthem to show …
Traditional funeral rites alluded to
Funeral rites on the battlefield.

20. Traditional funeral rites alluded to Funeral rites on the battlefield.
Funeral bells / church bells ‘passing-bells
Prayers, voices of mourning and choirs singing hymns
Candles held by boys
A Pall – cloth draped over a coffin
Flowers
The stuttering rifles rapid rattle
The monstrous anger of the guns
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells
Bugles calling from home (Perhaps a call to arms OR the last post)
The lights of the battlefield reflecting in their eyes OR their life light dying out
The pale colour of their girl’s brow, as she worries about them (A futile action now)
The patience of the people waiting and worrying

21. Anthem Techniques
Goal: To understand how the poet uses sound and imagery to achieve his purpose
Starter GW: Find, underline and label all the examples of onomatopoeia, alliteration, internal rhyme and personification you can find in Anthem
Sound questions
Imagery questions

22. Exploring sound devices in Anthem
What sound is imitated by the alliterated ‘r’ and consonance of the ‘t’ in lines 3-4.
What sound is captured by the onomatopoeia of ‘Shrill’ and ‘Wailing’
Why do you think Owen tries to capture the sounds of the battlefield?
Identify the sound device used in the last line of the poem and comment on how it effects the mood here

23. Exploring the imagery
What does the simile in line one suggest about the deaths of the soldiers?
How does the personification of the weapons in this poem make them seem? Why do you think Owen does this?
Line 8 is ambiguous – it could mean bugles playing the last post as in a funeral, or it could mean the call to arms – calling up the next lot of soldiers to the front. Which do you think it means? Why?
Why does Owen devote so many lines to what the soldiers WON’T have?

24. Static Images
Goal: To use publisher and google image to present the two poems studied thus far.
Teacher modelling – using publisher to collage
Setting background
Grouping and arranging objects
Your turn – divide the page into two boxes and create a collage to represent both poems
Plenary – publication time – whose does a good job?

25. Mental Cases
Goal: To appreciate the main themes Owen wants to communicate through this poem.
Starter: In your groups, reduce the poem ‘Mental Cases’ to 50 words.
You can ONLY use the words from the poem, but you can change the tense and order of them if you wish.

26. Mental Cases
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. Memory fingers in their hair of murders, Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander, Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. Always they must see these things and hear them, Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented Back into their brains, because on their sense Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh. -Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses. -Thus their hands are plucking at each other; Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness
There are 3 stanzas in this poem. It moves through a series of stages. What is the focus of each stanza
Who do you think the speaker of the poem is? What are they doing
What are the mental cases doing?
Why are they doing this?
Whose fault is it?

27. Exploring Effects Poetic Technique Example
Effect (What it makes the reader think, imagine, feel, hear)
Simile
Baring teeth that leer like skull’s teeth wicked …
Creates an image of the patients as aggressive, demented and almost animalistic. This emphasises the dehumanised state to which they’ve been reduced.
Metaphor
‘Purgatorial shadows’ (Purgatory is place where you are in limbo – caught between two worlds)
‘Murders, multitudinous murders …’
‘Sloughs of flesh…’ (Slough is a word for swamps)
Batter of guns, shatter of …
Sunlight seems …(to) bloodblack

28. Exploring Effects Poetic Technique Example
Effect (What it makes the reader think, imagine, feel, hear)
Simile
Baring teeth that leer like skull’s teeth wicked …
Creates an image of the patients as aggressive, demented and almost animalistic. This emphasises the dehumanised state to which they’ve been reduced.
Metaphor
‘Purgatorial shadows’ (Purgatory is place where you are in limbo – caught between two worlds)
Creates an image of the patients no being whole people – they are merely ‘shadows’ and are caught between two worlds – suggesting there minds are still partly on the battlefield, or that they simply are ‘shadows of their former selves.
Alliteration
‘Murders, multitudinous murders …’
The sound has a murmuring quality which perhaps mimics the sounds of the deranged patients from the asylum. Additionally, it creates an unsettling mood.
‘Sloughs of flesh…’ (Slough is a word for swamps)
Emphasises the horror of the setting, implying that there were so many corpses, it was like the whole environment was fillled with flesh
Batter of guns, shatter of …
Mimics the sounds the soldiers heard, creating a brutal mood
Sunlight seems …(to) bloodblack
Implies that every part of the day is associated with blood for the shell shocked soldiers.

29. Poetry into Prose
Goal: To use descriptive writing techniques to capture the setting of ‘Mental Cases’
Remaining homework due
Starter: Write down 5 things you learned about ‘Mental Cases’ yesterday
Revision – what makes effective poetic writing?
Shared writing – how could we approach the first stanza? First person or third? How do we capture the essence of Owen’s work – the tone, mood and purpose?
Individual writing
Feedback

30. Approaching the Exam
Goal: To be aware of how to plan for the examination
Sample Exam Paper: Assessment Criteria
Achievement Criteria
Achievement
Achievement with Merit
Achievement with Excellence
Analyse specified aspect(s) of at least two short written texts, using supporting evidence.
Analyse specified aspect(s) of at least two short written texts convincingly, using supporting evidence.
Analyse specified aspect(s) of at least two short written texts convincingly and with insight, using supporting evidence.
Overall level of Performance

31. Expectations
You are advised to spend 40 minutes writing an essay on your chosen topic in this booklet.
Using ONE of topics 1–6 below, write clearly and coherently about at least TWO short written texts you have studied in class.
Choose ONE topic.
Write an essay of at least 400 words.
Make sure you answer ALL parts of the topic.
Support your discussion with specific evidence from at least TWO texts.

32. Questions
For EACH of the texts, analyse how language features were used to create a strong sense of place.
For EACH of the texts, analyse techniques that made you feel sympathetic to a main character. Note:“Sympathetic to” could include “feel sorry for” and/or “feel positively toward”. “Character” can refer to an individual in a non-fiction text.
For EACH of the texts, analyse how links between the beginning and end helped you understand a main theme or issue.
For EACH of the texts, analyse how the author managed to “say a lot” in a few words.
Analyse how EACH of the texts was made to be BOTH entertaining AND thought-provoking.
For EACH of the texts, analyse techniques that made you feel strongly about a main theme or issue.

33. Sample Planning Exercise3.
Technique
Feeling about theme
Simile
For EACH of the texts, analyse techniques that made you feel strongly about a main theme or issue.
Planning Choices 2.
Poem:
Technique: Similes
Feelings about theme *
Poem
Similes
Feeling about theme 1.
Which model suits you best?
What do they have in common?
Is there another way of doing it?

34. Practice
Class planning
Class writing – using the PEA model
Your turn

35. Today only, open book, one hour
Formative Assessment
We will complete one test now, which I will mark and give you feedback on, then one at the end of the unit.
QuestionsTOPICS (Choose ONE)
1. For EACH of the texts, analyse how language techniques helped you understand ONE or MORE main character(s) or individual(s).
2. For EACH of the texts, analyse how techniques were used to strengthen or change your opinion of a particular topic or issue.
3. For EACH of the texts, analyse how ONE OR MORE symbols were used to present an important idea or ideas.
4. For EACH of the texts, analyse how language techniques helped you imagine an important setting.
5. For EACH of the texts, analyse why you thought either the beginning OR the ending was effective. Note: You may discuss the beginning of one of your texts and the ending of the other.
For EACH of the texts, analyse how the writer(s) presented a positive OR negative view of humanity and / or society. Note: You may discuss a positive view in one of your texts and a negative view in the other.
Today only, open book, one hour

36. Assessment Feedback
Starter: How self-aware are you of your strengths and weaknesses in English
Barriers to learning sheets
Essay feedback – The WWWs
The EBIs
Your essay and targets
Model essay analysis
Achieving your targets
Homework
Homework:
Prepare one page of study notes for the exam – you will be able to use them during the test.
Include ALL the quotations you think you’ll need