Ten weeks · Paper 1 Section B
Scheme of work
Built on one principle: comparison is not a bolt-on at the end but the way the poems are taught from week two. Every pair below is a pairing students could use in the exam.
| Wk | Poems | Teaching focus | Written outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction + If– | How to read a poem: voice, form, structure before theme-hunting. If– as training ground: the single suspended sentence, anaphora, the conditional ladder. Open the methods glossary and the quotation habits. | Annotated If–; first analytical paragraph (device to effect). |
| 2 | Prayer Before Birth + Hide and Seek | Voice and vulnerability: the litany against the game. First comparison work: both end in abandonment. Teach the integrated comparison sentence from the start. | Comparison sentences; fear/innocence quotation table opened. |
| 3 | Blessing + War Photographer | The anchor pairing: powerful images, religious lexis in both, structure as meaning (swelling stanzas against ordered sestets). | First full comparison paragraph, marked against AO2/AO3. |
| 4 | Search for My Tongue + Half-caste | Identity and language: form carrying culture (Gujarati script, creole); the confrontational “you”; performance and tone (play the Agard recordings). | Comparison paragraph: how each poem stages its argument. |
| 5 | Half-past Two + Piano | Childhood and time: coined compounds and timelessness against sensory memory and reluctant nostalgia; both poems’ endings as returns. | Timed paragraph; childhood/memory table updated. |
| 6 | Sonnet 116 + La Belle Dame sans Merci | Two loves, two forms: sonnet as argument against ballad as haunting; metre and rhyme taught properly here. | Form and structure paragraph (the most forgotten AO2 ground). |
| 7 | Poem at Thirty-Nine + Do not go gentle | Parents, loss and grief: free verse intimacy against villanelle refusal; Remember alongside as the third voice. | Comparison paragraph choosing the second poem independently. |
| 8 | My Last Duchess + The Tyger | Power and the sinister: dramatic monologue and the slipping mask; hammered quatrains and unanswerable questions; Remember + Prayer Before Birth mopped up in starters. | Full timed Section B answer (40 minutes). |
| 9 | Pairings and choice | The pairings map as revision spine: for each named poem, rehearse the choice of partner; speed re-reading and mark-up drills (5 minutes per poem). | Choice drills; three-point plans against the clock. |
| 10 | Exam writing | The forty-minute method end to end; integrated versus stapled comparison; conclusions that weigh. Redrafting from marking-desk annotations. | Second full timed answer + redraft. |
Slides for all sixteen poems exist in the department archive; the PETAL scaffolds and stanza-by-stanza question sequences in them map directly onto the poem pages of this site.