William Blake poetry in yr 7

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Dd has been asked to explain how we know the poem London by William Blake has a key theme of constriction -using a PEE paragraph for her answer

She's 11 -seems a little hard to me

Is this normal in which case I shall google the answer with her or is this homework a bit hard ? in which case I shall send a note in saying she tried but didn't have a clue

Iguana, considering many songs have an awful lot of "Ooh Ooh baby nah nah nah", no... I'm not convinced they market poetry well.

So the lyrical beauty of many songs is also worthy of hatred?

Does Shakespeare fall into your hated category as well?

The new syllabus will see the introduction of such poetry at an earlier age.

TBH, "chartered" as booked transport just depresses me in this context. If her teacher hasn't any idea about how this poem works, how is your daughter meant to learn?

You can imagine how all this poetry is going down in the lowest sets further up the school.

Try teaching shakespeare to bottom 10.....it makes me want to cry

I don't think poetry is difficult to teach. Personally I have found teaching Dickens more arduous than Shakespeare or poetry as there are just so many words that have fallen out of use and the students haven't got the patience to trawl through them.

I love teaching Shakespeare to bottom sets! They really enjoy it - after all the stories are full of sex and death . It's great when you introduce a Shakespeare play, they all moan and 3 weeks later they are excited and enthusiastic about what's happening next. Victorian stuff is harder,just because the syntax is so complicated but again, the stories are often v powerful.

I thought it was the op who misunderstood "charter'd" - I thought the teacher had handed the poem out without much discussion and told the kids to do what they could with it. Tbf, a poem like Poison Tree or To a Rose might have been a more accessible starting point with Blake, but if it's a top set, why not challenge them?

personally, yes, we are anti-shakespeare types in the house.
You know in R4 Desert Island Discs, they get full works of Shakespeare? I'd be begging to have anything else. Maybe Steinbeck or Jane Austen's complete works.

Shakespeare must have been very elegant when all the words were current. Now you need a translation service to make sense of it.

Other thing about Shakespeare is that it was meant to be watched & received as performance. Studying it as literature does the material a huge disservice.

Interesting. The teacher at ds's school say that the Shakespeare and the poetry are the most popular and easiest to teach the lower sets. It's the novels they struggle with. The kids are all used to listening to song lyrics and watching drama on telly.

Agree - Shakespeare can be really great fun. They love the insults as well. Far easier than Dickens.

Plus, they usually start studying extracts of Shakespeare in ks2. Then, if they study one play every year in full from yr 7 (like at ds's school), then it's no biggie by the time they hit yr10 - they're experts!

God now I feel really useless.....
It's probably just end of term brain and lack of tolerance!

Yes that's right; all poetry and all Shakespeare is worthy of 'hate' because it isn't written in 'plain English'.

What a pathetic and lazy perspective.

"Studying (Shakespeare) as literature does the material a huge disservice".

Gosh yes all those university and A level and GCSE courses through the decades were a waste of time! wow!

YeOldeTroute: just because you aren't capable of grasping the joys and depths of literature does not negate their existence. I hope you don't pass your narrow grasp of literature onto your children.

Sheesh, people are touchy about St. Shakespeare.

FWIW, I also loathe coffee, formula 1, vanilla, the smell of new cars, Forest School farce, ugly prejudices, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory.

You can like those things. Just don't ask me to!! I manage to like other food-sport-school activities-smells-TV shows-literature (that you probably despise and cheerfully and loudly slag off but I couldn't care less).