Whole Class Guided Reading - War Poetry Lesson 2

This is the first lesson in a six-lesson unit of whole class guided reading which focuses on war poetry from World War 1. Perfect for KS2 (I personally delivered these lessons to my class of years 5/6). Individual lessons are priced at £1 but the full unit of lessons is only £4.

Each lesson includes all the resources ready to deliver a fantastic session: a PowerPoint presentation (with difficult language already explained), any worksheets or texts needed for the children and differentiated Success Criteria! Also, remember that all PowerPoint presentations can be opened using ActivInspire (send me a message if you need help exporting the file!)

The unit will cover the following areas:
Lesson 1 - discussing the genre and predicting the features of the poems
Lesson 2 - summarising the events in Wilfred Owen’s 'Dulce et Decorum Est’
Lesson 3 - pupils will take learning into their own hands and study one of Siegfried Sassoon’s famous war poems: ‘How to Die’, ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ or ‘Absolution’
Lesson 4 - in this lesson, the class will be comparing the poems they’ve already read with Jessie Pope’s pro-war poem ‘The Call’. This is a great lesson for discussions on the themes of pro and anti-war poetry! The questions are scaffolded with the sentence stems provided for their answers
Lesson 5 - for a different twist on the theme, this lesson will be looking at Ted Hughes’ ‘Platform One’ and the children will be visualising the poem by drawing key scenes from it
Lesson 6 - one final look at the work of Wilfred Owen and the fantastic ‘The Sentry’. Pupils will develop their ability to skim, scan and close-read by working out if the statements are true or false