1. The Falling Leaves and Mametz Wood
LO:
1:To understand the poem The Falling Leaves and compare to Futility.
2: To annotate the poem Mametz Wood

2. Homework Check:
What did we learn about World War I through our homework task?
What was life like for a soldier at that time?

3. Who was Margaret Postgate Cole?
She was an English politician and writer who campaigned against conscription (forcing people to join the army) during World War I.
Now turn to Page 45!

4. The title gives an impression of something natural and ordinary
The Falling Leaves November 1915 Today, as I rode by, I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree In a still afternoon, When no wind whirled them whistling to the sky, But thickly, silently, They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon;
Shows this takes place during WWI
Use of word ‘dropping’ connotations of falling quickly and directly
Peaceful image- a contrast
Alliteration: ‘wh’- leaves seem old and ready to fall
Emphasises how many are falling

5. Shows she is thinking as she walks
And wandered slowly thence For thinking of a gallant multitude Which now all withering lay, Slain by no wind of age or pestilence, But in their beauty strewed Like snowflakes falling on the Flemish clay.
Gallant = brave
Multitude = Many
Talking about soldiers
Comparing soldiers to the dead leaves
Pestilence= disease
Slain = killed
The leaves were ready to die- the soldiers were not
Strewed = scattered/ spread
Flemish= Belgium where there was lots of fighting
Snowflakes: cold/ dead
But also unique and individual
Millions of them- because millions of soldiers dead

6. Comparing The Falling Leaves to Futility
Fill in the sheet on similarities and differences between the two poems. (These need to be accurate and detailed because you will be using this sheet for your homework!)

7. Homework:
Use your comparison sheet to write PEELA Paragraphs for all the boxes on the sheet. Date Due: Monday 3 December

8. Mametz Wood

9. Wasted= decaying but, also lives wasted
For years afterwards the farmers found them – the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades as they tended the land back into itself. A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade, the relic of a finger, the blown and broken bird’s egg of a skull, all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white across this field where they were told to walk, not run, towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.
Suggests looking after and caring for something
The land will be able to recover- but not the soldiers
Suggests something from the past. Also associated with saints
Natural image: shows how fragile
Mimicked = copied. Stones and bones mixed together
Suggests they were let down by those in charge
Another natural image- but the guns are not natural. Disturbing image.

10. Sentinel: a watchman or guard- strong image
And even now the earth stands sentinel, reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin. This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave, a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm, their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
Simile to make use think of those injured and the healing mentioned in line 3
As if they are supporting each other
Dance of skeletons

11. As if they are screaming
This should not have happened- an untimely death
in boots that outlasted them, their socketed heads tilted back at an angle and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open. As if the notes they had sung have only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues.
All the flesh has gone
As if they are screaming
Like a bird- links to line 6
Gentle action word- contrast