Little Boy Crying - Mervyn Morris

A complete set of resources for teaching Morris’ poem “Little Boy Crying”. This is on the Songs of Ourselves iGCSE poetry exam for CIE, but is a great poem to explore this controversial topic. I have read online that it is based on a childhood memory of Morris being hit by his father and then returning to this as an adult disciplining his son. This seems totally likely, but I haven’t found confirmation from a trustworthy source.

There is a descriptive writing PPT included which will allow students to explore how they create imagery in description before going on to look at Morris’ use of descriptive techniques and imagery in his poem. There is also a separate PPT with key vocabulary to explore in a physical and engaging way which I thought would be useful for weaker readers or EAL students.

I have included everything in the main presentation that you would need to teach this poem for the first time,for revision, or to even ask students to pre-teach from. The lesson objectives (on each slide) and end of lesson exam-style essay question ask students to explore how the language, structure and form present the themes of discipline and parent-child relationships. (For a higher ability class, you could split these two.) and the starter activities, biographical information and the guided questions (with answers provided on the next slide) help students meet that outcome. There is support provided for students’ essay answers in the form of sentence starters,simplified assessment objectives and mark schemes, sentence starters, paragraph structures, and a peer/self-marking slide. A really interesting lesson to explore students relationships with their parents.

Enjoy!