Common Entrance Poetry

[Bluestockings]

Most prep school teachers seem to leave the teaching of poetry to the last minute. Have any Mners experienced really good teaching of poetry for CE at their offspring's schools? Or really bad?

Really good. Started at the start of year 7 with poems I did for o level eg. Sassoon. DS now loves poetry.

Great stuff! So many boys just don't get it at all!

Fenton's book I think it's called English Poetry is really excellent. It's a thin book and covers pretty much everything you need to know about analysing poetry.

Palgraves Golden Treasury with additional poems is excellent for the actual poetry.

We start the basics in Y5 and begin the CE course proper with all 4 elements at the start of Y7

I spend far more time teaching the poetry than anything else, it's the hardest bit!

Thanks, Manic and LF! Good for you spending time on the poetry. You're a rare bird, it seems!

DS english lessons were fab fab fab.
Really focussed on the poetry. In fact, there's a great resource about poetic devices on line. I'll try to dig out and link. Really good stuff.

ds did poetry throughout the two years but no plays. The theme was conflict - some sets looked at Macbeth while his read To Kill a Mockingbird.