Unseen Poetry Analysis Lesson: Infant Sorrow

This lesson offers the opportunity, for students to analyse language and structure in the poem ‘Infant Sorrow,’ by William Blake.

Starter task encourages students to work independently by reading and annotating the poem, utilising a dictionary for unfamiliar words.

A thorough, timed task is the main activity and focuses on the structure of the poem (stanzas, line breaks etc.) as well as the use of language to communicate ideas to the reader.

Plenary task is a self assessment against AO2.

Differentiation:
Students may work in pairs to complete the starter task.
Simplistic to complex analysis questions provided in the main task.
Extension tasks provided for closer analysis of language in the poem.

Typically for a 50 minute lesson-students can complete the main task as homework if the set is lower than a 3 and timing for the starter task goes beyond 10 minutes.