Do GCSE students have to write a poem as part of the English exam?

[HeadPotato]

A lot of my year 9 son's English homework seems to be writing poems in the style of Wordsworth, Shelley etc.
He hates it almost as much as I do
Just wondering if it is something he will be asked to do in the GCSE exam?

No

No, but it does require him to consider what defines their poetry and therefore improve his analytical skills

Agreed- no. Your DS will be relieved!

No but ds had to memorise and be able to discuss 17 poems as part of the exam. This was last year. He knew that there would be a “theme” such as love, war etc and he would have to compare 2 poems from the list. He was thrilled it was 2 of his favourites.

Having just said all of that, it may entirely depend on the exam board.

No. Depending on the spec he will have to write either a narrative or a descriptive prose response but no poetry writing.

No. But KS3 is separate and not constrained by what's on the GCSE, so maybe his teachers are encouraging students to branch out. Some kids will be loving that task. I hate writing poetry myself but I think it's a good idea it's something that's on the curriculum.

My ds’s school started their GCSE’s in year 9 so op’s ds may be doing his too, or maybe he isn’t.

I do think op that knowing the different styles and genres will massively help when it comes to exams. Ds hated the thought of poetry until he started to revise it and loved interpreting it all.

I highly recommend the CGP revision books which are available in pretty much every subject and were invaluable for revision. We got ours from WH Smith.

Recreative writing is an option on the OCR A Level. It's an excellent test of whether students have actually understood for themselves how a particular writer works or whether they can just parrot ten examples of technique that their teacher has drilled into them.

But no, it's not an exam hoop, if that's what matters.