1. What you are assessed on:
AO1: Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations.
AO2: Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings.
AO3: Make comparisons and explain links between texts, evaluating writers’ different ways of expressing meaning and achieving effects.

2. Named poems on Higher tier
Conflict: Belfast Confetti, The Yellow Palm, next to of course god America i
Others might be named…
Section B will be based on an unseen poem, on which candidates will be asked to answer either one or two questions.
Section A carries 36 marks and Section B 18. Candidates will be advised to spend about 45 minutes on Section A and 30 minutes on Section B, to reflect some time for reading in Section B.

3. In this unit you are expected to respond to:
Ideas, themes and issues
Form
Structure
Language
(Sound and imagery)

4. Approaches to Poetry Title Shape Personal Response Voice Vocabulary
Imagery
Structure
Interpretation

5. Title What ideas are suggested by the title?
Mindmap all interpretations and connotations
Read the poem quickly to see if any words or phrases support the connotation. Highlight those that do.
Check the opening and closing lines more thoroughly. Do these link to the title in any way?

6. Shape Look at the shape of the poem on the page?
Does it have a recognisable form? Is it a sonnet, a ballad, a narrative…?
If so, how does that add to your ideas about the title?
Does it have stanzas?
Is it an odd shape?
What are the line lengths like? All equal or very different?
Can you make predictions about the poem based on the answers to these questions?

7. Personal Response
Read the poem again and decide what you think the poet was trying to do?
Is there a message?
Is it an emotional response to an event?
Is it trying to create an emotive response from you?
Is it for someone else?
Can there be different interpretations?
Many of the best poems have different interpretations

8. Voice Who seems to be speaking the poem? Is there a clear persona?
What type and tone of voice do you imagine?
What part/s of the poem are most powerful aloud?
As you were reading you may have noticed sound affects like alliteration and assonance. What effect do these create?

9. Vocabulary Are there any words or phrases that you find interesting?
Find a couple and share your reasons why they stand out to you?
Now, can you trace any others that link to the first words you chose?
You can often find chains of reference in this way
Are there any repetitions?
What types of words are used a lot? (Verbs; nouns; adjectives; pronouns…
This can tell you a lot about what the poem is doing

10. Imagery
Some of the words and phrases you find might be used to create vivid visual imagery
Similes using ‘like’ or ‘as’ are easy to find and these make a direct comparison
Metaphors and symbols are often more difficult to find.
Are there any references in the poem that could stand for something else?

11. Structure How is the poem organised?
If it has stanzas, are they used to develop an idea (like paragraphs in prose)?
Are the lines end-stopped or run on using enjambment? (This is always a good find – the poet must want an idea to run into another line or idea for a reason!)

12. Interpretation This is what you have been doing from the start!
Now put it into a written response, supporting your ideas with quotations:
The poem suggests…
The form may mean…
The voice of the poem supports this because…
The vocabulary / image / sound / structure suggests…

13. Glossary Alliteration Assonance Context Dialect words
Dramatic monologue
End stopped lines
Enjambment
Form
Half rhyme
Hyperbole
Iambic pentameter
Imagery
Metaphor
Non-standard English
Personification
Refrain
Rhyme scheme
Rhyming couplet
Rhythm
Simile
Sonnet
Speaker
Stanza
Structure
Symbol
Tone

14. Example Unseen Poem and Question: June 2011 ©AQA How do you think the speaker feels about the child and his experience of learning to read and how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings?

15. Slow Reader He can make sculptures and fabulous machines, invent games, tell jokes, give solemn, adult advice – but he is slow to read. When I take him on my knee with his Ladybird book he gazes into the air, sighing and shaking his head like an old man who knows the mountains are impassable. He toys with words, letting them go cold as gristly meat, until I relent and let him wriggle free: a fish returning to its element, or a white-eyed colt – shying from the bit *– who sees that if he takes it in his mouth he’ll never run quite free again. VICKI FEAVER * ‘bit’: the metal mouthpiece of a bridle, used to control a horse