Unseen Poetry Scheme - Relationships

The aim of this scheme is to familiarise students with the study of poetry with some comparative elements.

Whilst context in not a feature in AQA’s unseen poetry exam question, I have included this element in this scheme as I have selected a few poets that they will revisit for the GCSE poetry anthology. They will not be expected to write about context in this scheme but they will use the information to select and retrieve key facts in the style of a language paper 1, question 1 task.

Teachers are expected to ‘live model’ key areas: thesis statements, planning of comparisons and analytical paragraphs. It is useful for students to see paragraphs developing ‘live’. As the poems have been used in numerous schemes and exam boards you can find modelled paragraphs online but I feel this takes away the value of collaborative writing in lesson time.

The poems included cover a variety of relationship types; mother and son, relationships between the individual and society, the individual and identity. I have purposefully avoided romantic relationships.