Teaching Resources KS3, KS4 and UKS4
This resource consists of 10 Power Points (3 for KS3+, 5 for KS4 and 2 for Upper Key Stage 4). Each Power Point presents a new ‘prompt’ to inspire your children’s poems on the theme of light. Each Power Point begins with a slide of teacher’s notes followed by images, poems, and activities to fire up the writers!
For the purposes of the competition, we suggest children try several of the ideas – sharing and editing their various pieces – before finally selecting their best work and submitting a clear and legible poem they feel proud of.
Click the appropriate ‘Age Group’ Prompt below to see PowerPoint display.
Click the corresponding ‘Title’ to open the ‘Materials’ document in your default MS Word Viewer
| Age Group (PowerPoint) |
Title (Materials) |
Content/Outcome |
| KS3 Prompt 1 | Spells | Using a range of ingredients (animals, elements, body parts) we will cast poetic Spells for Light |
| KS3 Prompt 2 | Creatures | Using an Emily Dickinson poem, we will learn how to turn abstract nouns into animals |
| KS3 Prompt 3 | Fragments | We will find secret poems hiding inside existing poems |
| KS4 Prompt 1 | Guide from the Other Side | After considering creatures who bring messages from elsewhere, we will become guides ourselves and write poetic monologues expressing our good intentions and explaining ourselves to a doubtful public |
| KS4 Prompt 2 | Glimpses | We will look at pathetic fallacy before writing ‘Matchbook Poems’ |
| KS4 Prompt 3 | Reversing the Current | Looking at the story of Icarus and using proverbs about light we will write poems that find light in the darkness |
| KS4 Prompt 4 | Constellations | We will create poems that respond to our own constellations |
| KS4 Prompt 5 | Fragments (part 1) Fragments (part 2) |
Using fragments of Sappho and Tom Phillips’s A Humument, we will expand and reduce existing texts to create new work NOTE this is an expanded version of the KS3 resource |
| UKS4 Prompt 1 | Consolation | We will look at the specific to find a way to keep light alive in dark times before writing a poem celebrating the dependable and true |
| UKS4 Prompt 2 | Guides | Using an animation by Alison de Vere we will examine whether all guides can be trusted before writing our own guiding poetic monologues WARNING This contains some adult content; see Powerpoint for details |
