The Black Flamingo - L12: What is the Setting of The Black Flamingo?

This is the twelfth lesson in a scheme of work using Dean Atta’s modern novel ‘The Black Flamingo’, to explore AQA’s GCSE paper 2 unseen poetry component.
The lesson can be broken down as follows:
Focus Five: Recap of key information surrounding context, genre and plot.
TASK: Introduce students to the core concept of setting and discuss why Atta set the story in London, England.
TASK: Introduce students to the different Physical Places: Michael’s childhood home, School, Michael’s grandparents’, University in Brighton, Drag Society/Glitterball across the text and students should make notes as we go along.
TASK: Exploration of the Prologue focusing on the Michael’s childhood home setting.
TASK: Focus on the love letter scene and the impact this may have had on Michael growing up and his experiences of school life.
TASK: Focus on the different names used by Michael throughout the text and the final change of nickname whilst attending university. Activity then linked to researching name etymology and creating an acrostic poem on student names/identity.
TASK: Students should update their setting worksheet with key information about the text as a whole – teachers can guide through this.
TASK: Opportunity to spend more time working on creative project for poster competition.
PLENARY: Review of learning on roadmap.