This makes the poem’s perspective seem much more distant as the pronoun “he said” is an unknown commander or officer in charge making it seem very matter of fact and commonplace that the “six hundred” should ride into battle and possibly not make it out again. As well as this, the imperative verb in “Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns” he said” makes it sound like the soldiers were very used to following orders, doing what they were told and expected to do this without questioning or reasoning why they were there. The rhyme scheme mimicking the repetitive sound of the horse hooves beating as they charged into certain death reinforces this impersonal idea. Meanwhile, this maternal perspective is not shown in The Charge of the Light Brigade, instead the soldiers are depicted as brave and honourable and almost as if they should die for their country with us remembering their sacrifice but from an impersonal and removed viewpoint. The ambiguity in the language makes it seem as if she values these memories and wants to cling onto them and reinforces the idea that the mother in the poem could be any mother over time who has lost a child, either in conflict as the time setting of the poem around “Armistice Sunday” suggests or at any other time. At this point in the poem, stanza 1 and 2 the mother is lost in a memory of before her son went away, perhaps to school or to the war. In Weir’s Poppies we are shown tactile imagery continuously throughout the poem to reinforce how this makes her feel close to her son “I pinned one onto your lapel” and “I rounded up as many” both use verbs and the first person pronoun “I” to remind us that the mother is desperate to touch her son in a loving, caring and comforting manner, as if this might be the last time that she sees him. These are shown by: Weir’s maternal perspective and Tennyson’s less personal viewpoint the emotional impact of your son leaving in contrast to the bravery of the soldiers finally, by the impact of loss and the brutality of death shown.īoth Weir and Tennyson reflect on different perspectives of conflict and how this affects the people involved, whether that is mothers or soldiers. Model to stretch and challenge studentsīoth Weir in Poppies and Tennyson in The Charge of the Light Brigade explore the different experiences of conflict in their poems. I’ve also written a model example, just for fun. Then, as feedback I have colour coded a paragraph from a really high level example to show them how to develop their responses further. I’ve reminded them to use: multi-quotation analysis and explore connotations and to develop the effect too. I marked the paragraphs and was really pleased with the overall way that they were able to compare and I have encouraged the students to see the framework as a support guidance on the structure and that if they are confident to move away from it, then to do so. I also got them to plan their three comparison ideas, first. Then I used the scaffolding below and I asked them to consider Bayonet Charge, Exposure, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Exposure as their comparative ideas. First, I got them to tell me what the experiences of soldiers were in the poems and we wrote this up together. This meant that they were working on Compare the presentation of experiences of conflict in Poppies and another poem you have studied. Following on from this blog post, Why I love…Approaching the AQA Power and Conflict slightly differently the guided practice has been successful with Year 10 and they are now moving onto independently write their comparison paragraphs, starting with one of the five poems we have studied.
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