The Highwayman Alfred Noyes Teaching Resources Powerpoints Worksheets

Assorted great planning and ideas for the superb poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Great powerpoints.

Great ideas and worksheets.

Plenty to get your teeth into and reassemble.

Sample planning :

Introduce children to ‘The Highwayman’. Explain that it is a poem that tells a story involving a highwayman.
They will need to listen carefully as the poem is read, as it uses a lot of ‘old-fashioned’ language. The poem was written by Alfred Noyes and was first published in August 1906.
Read the poem to the class and then children talk with partner about what they have found out about the story.

Come back together and discuss the story told through the poem. How can children tell that this poem was written some time ago?
Make notes on the board about character and story.

Make notes about the Highwayman’s appearance.

Recap on the techniques we use in fiction writing (and make clear again that poetry is a type of narrative) to describe the scene/setting to the reader. What is our main objective? To create an image in the reader’s mind. We do this by using the senses – recap.

Re-read just the first three lines of the poem, ask children to close eyes and visualise the setting as I read it again. Talk about the language and the kind of pictures it created for them.

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
Can the children see a technique which has been used in each of the three lines? Metaphor. Discuss.
Children to pick out words which evoke the senses:
Darkness, gusty trees, ghostly etc

Recap what we have found out so far about ‘The Highwayman’. What makes it a narrative poem?

Explain children’s final writing outcome. They are going to use the opening part of ‘The Highwayman’ as their inspiration and they are going to write their own poem based on Bess, the Landlord’s daughter.

Recap on last lesson – what is a simile and what is a metaphor?
What are the three nouns which Noyes describes using metaphor? The wind, the moon and the road. Children are also going to use metaphor to describe these, they are then going to use simile to describe Bess waiting for her love.

Explain that today’s planning session is going to focus on the metaphor part of the writing outcome.

Model how to write a metaphor by first mind mapping each item.