Thirteen - Caleb Femi - Lesson!

This engaging, comprehensive lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of Caleb Femi’s poem ‘Thirteen’ with particular focus upon the language, structure, and subject matter used within the poem. By the end of the lesson, students demonstrate their knowledge of the text analytically, through assured, appropriate, and sustained interpretations.

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:

-Securing contextual understanding of systemic racism, stop-and-searches, and other social factors that are addressed in the poem;
-Reading and interpreting the poem, using a provided line-by-line analysis, and interactive group activities;
-Developing their understanding through inferring and analysing key language and structural choices;
-Analysing how Femi’s main themes and ideas are conveyed throughout the poem;
Self/ Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts.

Included is:
-Whole lesson PowerPoint - eye-catching and substantial (19 slides);
-Copy of poem (freely available online);
-Deeper thinking worksheet (utilising Bloom’s structured activities);
-Analysis template with structure strip for creating well-organised responses;

All resources are provided as both PDF ( (to ensure consistency of formatting between computers) and word documents (for easy editing - in the zip file).

There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to middle-ability year 10 and 11 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.