Y9 English Lit - any teachers out there pls

[vickibee]

My son who is ASD so he struggles with communication and empathy has been set two poems this week - Sonnet 29 by Elizabeth Browning and Cousin Kate
I may be being harsh but what 13 yo boy is going to be interested in two love poems that are 200 years old? It was so hard and the questions that were set so deep and difficult. I virtually had to spoon feed him with the answers.
If there is any English teachers out there can you help me understand why this seems so irrelevant for todays teens?
Is this part of the GCSE Syllabus, he will never manange even though he is bright as a button becayse he does not understand inference or impled meanings

Your child will need to study an anthology of 15 poems and be able to compare and contrast them for GCSE English Literature Paper 2. Look on YouTube for Mr Salles or Mr Bruff they do great videos explaining the poems. You don't have to feel the poems impact personally as such but you do need to learn how to write about them. Nobody expects a teenager to identify with how Rossetti was feeling when she wrote Sonnet 29, but they will expect them to recognise the literary devices used and the impact of them.

Thnx it is way beyond me.
The era was different where a soiled woman and an illegitimate child were shameful. This is the opposite of today's culture is it based on a true story or just fiction.

I have girl/boy twins in year 9. My dad has ASD and my son at one point was officially diagnosed as borderline as he had many ASD traits. Most of these are gone now (long story - infant reflexes needed to go dormant) but he is still very very literal and can miss inferences.
But I would say neither of my twins are interested in 200 year old love poems and I doubt too many year 9s are. My children are at different schools and my daughter has been studying poems for three years (she moved school and lucked out I think as if she had of stayed she would have moved onto text). I am a bit poemed out but I realise they use poems as its easier to demonstrate techniques that they can then use in larger texts. Its all about identifying techniques not understanding love or relationships.
ie poems which ryhme are more sing song suggesting lightheartedness.
ie words repeated in poems mean that the poet wants you to pay attention to that word.
ie looking for metaphores in the piece - weather is a good one ie wet weather and rain suggestive of tears and sadness.
My daughter has recently started war poems. Maybe your son might be able to develop his poem skills looking at these?
These are the things my daughter has learned for poems:
Identify the EVIDENCE (or QUOTE) and any relevant TECHNICAL TERMS such as Figurative and Emotive Language and Imagery and/or Structure.

1. Make sure you include the Evidence and/or Quotes.
2. Identify the techniques the poet has used with this Evidence and/or Quotes to support the POINT. The techniques include Techniques - Figurative and Emotive Language and Imagery and Techniques - Structure. GLOSSARY OF TECHNIQUES FIGURATIVE AND EMOTIVE LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY Alliteration: Assonance: Constance: Hyperbole: Onomatopoeia: Metaphor: Opposing language: Personification: Sibilance: Similes: STRUCTURE Rhyme: Poem Styles:
Acrostic:
Ballad:
Couplet: 
Epic:
Free Verse:
Haiku:
Limerick:
Narrative:
Sonnet: Rhyme scheme: Regular or irregular rhythm: Repetition: Punctation and pauses (including enjambment)

@ittakes2
Blimey that is an intensive list, I don’t know what half the words mean on your list. It seems to take the fun out of reading when you have to micro analyse it.
He is not a big reader as it as so poetry bores him to tears. I am sure there could be more appealing poems than a love sonnet.
I think he will struggle with this 😔

They have to read a variety of poems for GCSE and yes, there probably will be some 200 year old love poems in there.

It's funny isn't it - why does no one ever ask the Maths teachers why they can't do something more appealing to teenagers than fractions?

@IHeartKingThistle 

@vickibee
Could you try to approach them like solving a riddle? I'm just thinking reframing them like this might make a bit more sense to your DS?

Yes thistle you are prob right there, the only difference is that maths is logical and follows rules and ds can manage this.
These poems are impossible for ds becuase they are so flowery with lots of inferences and flowery language.
He has an EHCP explaining he struggles wit this

Mamba I can try the riddle idea but it is not my strong point either I have an engineering degree so not arty at all.

His home learning is to write a poem about family and neither of us will know where to start lol

I mean this kindly, but I"m not sure your attitude of 'these poems are impossible for ds' and saying that you are 'not arty at all' is very useful to ds. I would suggest taking the list of features mentioned up post and writing definitions of all of them. Google or look in a dictionary. Bite size has some nice animations on lots of these. Then, go through phrase by phrase and play 'spot the feature'. It's a methodical way which appeals to people who are afraid of poetry. Like maths, it's just practice. If you are stuck with the family poem, do an acrostic or a Limerick. Having a tight structure makes it easier to write by limiting your choices. Hope this is a bit helpful.

I love teaching sonnet 29 (and I am an English teacher and Lit grad who hates poetry)! Wait until you get to all the hidden secret Victorian sexual imagery...

I think poetry is really important in terms of it being another way to express ideas and feelings. You could apply that same principle to everything - I spent HOURS trying to get my head round balancing shells and equations in GCSE chem, along with cracking hydrocarbons. Has never made a blind bit of difference to me since 2004.

Understanding the constancies in human ideas and expression? Playing with language to see how it can be used? That's absolutely my thing.

However, in your case I can see why it would be tricky. I tend to take a "literally..
Metaphorically..." approach. I.e. sonnet 29 literally she is comparing her thoughts to a "wild vine" which grows on a "tree", metaphorically she is suggesting that her thoughts (and therefore she herself) rely on the presence of the lover to give her strength etc. Might help.

Thnx for you comments, I do my best to support him in all his subjects and willtry to help with this
I think I may need a lot of advance help from google
I find it a bit odd that these poems represent an era where women were second class and reflect a culture so different from today. Is this deliberate to get kids to think about this? Ds did not even know what an illegitimate child was and why it was considered shameful . Though provoking I guess

Basically they are not expecting your child to come up with some new idea about a 200 year old poem. Start with Mr Bruff, he will spoonfeed the information to both you and your son, in a good way. I have an English lit degree so I love all of this to some extent, both my Dh (engineering degree) and my teenage sons are STEM lovers.

Ds1 learned that you are just repeating/regurgitating what someone else says about the poem, plenty of information online including what that massive list of literary devices mean, all in video form from Mr Bruff, he is at a really accessible level. You are to support your son, not teach him. He will have used some of those literary devices in primary school especially a simile! He has a teacher in class who will explain stuff to him. This is how people feel about maths by the way they don't understand it, it is easy for you, hard for others.

As you are looking at poems written around mid 1800s why not watch some films of the same era to see it visually rather than trying to explain. A great one would be Pride and Prejudice which will cover women's prospects - to marry well, sex outside of marriage with Lydia and the shame that brings not only to her but the rest of her sisters. You see the dances, balls make or break connections due to behaviour, the manners, the bowing, the posh ball and the local ball with everyone there. You can pause the film and chat about it, see how they are introduced in age order from oldest to youngest, when you get married the order changes to the married woman first!

Neither of my sons was/is interested in the poems and they were doing the Power and Conflict ones about war mainly! The more marks you can get on just knowing what to write about the poems you are taught, the better as the most marks are for the unseen poem and that was incredibly hard for Ds. He doesn't understand nuance or suggestion in a poem either.

Yes they deliberately explore things the students won't have experienced in literature that's one of the joys of it.

I love those period films I watched Emma recently the new one.
We watched Oliver at Xmas and he learned about suffragettes by watching Mary Poppins original. I then watched the suffragette movie with him which he really liked and useful because they covered it in history and he knew all the answers to the teachers questions.
I wish I could get him to read books. He has read Harry Potter and hunger games but icsnnot get him to try anything different

I have a y9 ASD boy too and we were given romantic poetry in y8 lockdown and got total refusal. When I looked up the syllabus it seemed you could do war poetry or romantic poetry so I messaged his English teacher saying he doesn't get romantic poetry at all and is refusing, can I do other poetry. And she said that was fine. So we did some war poetry instead. The teacher also stopped romantic poetry early so they could do rest in class and shifted to the next topic. She said lots of the children were not keen.

I think the exam board had a list of set poems so I used some of those. He doesn't get relationship things at all, his tutor had asked to send in photos of your pets and he asked me why I hadn't sent a photo of one pet and I explained that pet was dead, it would be alive pets. I googled guides on the poems as otherwise it was the blind leading the blind. If you ask the teacher they may be able to help.

We also have refusal to read books, I told him school had said (when open last term) to take a book to read each day and he was but then said I know I can take a maths book to read. If your DS likes animals our English has just done Of Mice and Men and DS liked that, but some of the animals are killed by accident. Last thing he read apart from maths books was Harry Potter though I read news articles to him everyday and some travel ones.

"If your DS likes animals our English has just done Of Mice and Men and DS liked that, but some of the animals are killed by accident."

Oh good lord don't read of mice and men thinking it's about animals! It's a great text but it's not a cheery read.

If he likes animals why not try some of the non-fiction (and they've made these into TV series recently so they might help) - Durrel's "my family and other animals" or the funnier ones - Beasts in my Belfry etc - or Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small?

Glad I'm not the only one struggling with it. I think because the teacher is so passionate about the subject she doesn't get why the kids aren't. It seems so detached from 21st century life.
I think they did mice and men and blood brothers in y8. He came home shocked because it had the N word in it which he thought was forbidden and couldn't understand why it was allowed in a book.

Poetry is amazing. It staggers me that it can ever be described as boring, and yet the majority of kids have no interest in it at all these days (I've been teaching for twenty five years and watched its decline). Part of the problem, I think, is that culturally nowadays, poetry is not generally valued or even read much by a lot of people. I think young people also suffer from being part of the technology/reality TV generation: it's very easy to access material which requires very little of you intellectually, and thus the concept of applying yourself to something to understand it (and this goes for other subject too, not just English) and the joy/reward/satisfaction of doing so is being lost.

I find in class now that for many kids, if they can't get it instantly, it's boring.

I find that when teaching older poems it can often make sense to the students with ASD to say:

1. What was society like when this poem was written?
2. Let's look at what the poem is saying about this topic

Once we have an overview of what the text is about, then I'd move into the more abstract analysis.

Text choice in a good English curriculum should give students a broad diet of texts, including topics and genres they wouldn't otherwise read.

Don't for goodness sake try to make him learn a whole load of techniques. If he can recognise figurative language and say what its intended impact might be, that's enough. For example, the speaker in 'Kate' is compared to a glove. What does this suggest about her lover's attitudes towards women? About societal attitudes?Etc.

OP language can be methodical and follow rules too. A PP broke it down really well for you, it can be gone through like a checklist in a logical way. He doesn't need to emotionally connect with them.

I think you might be projecting your opinion of poetry rather than be genuinely willing to help.

And yes, the text choices are awful and not in the least bit diverse. Blame the government for that one.

This is why teachers and kids in classrooms are important. I teach this to year 9 every year and every year they love it. Why? I make it relevant, we look at newspapers from the time (I get them online), we discuss how society has changed, we look at the role of women and modern issues with what love is in the world of social media etc. Honestly, these poems dont really work at home. They need a teacher. All you can do is look at them, look at Mr Bruff, talk about how ridiculous the whole situation is and how love isnt logical, try make them aware of the issues women faced at the time, try identify a rhyming scheme, some language features, and talk about effect (what questions does it leave you with).

he is looking at a better poem right now in a live lesson, it is Mother a distance by Simon Armitage and he does seem to be getting it more

@Perfect28 you are prob right there I am not big on poetry but I do try my best to help him. I am much better at Maths and Science
I remember being made to read the history of Mr Polly at school and it put me off for life

I see this all the time, parents project their fears and loves on to their children. Try to be neutral! How many of us grew up believing we couldn't do things because our parents told us those things were hard?

We are all different. He'll be back learning with a teacher again soon :)