Thursday's exam: Poetry

Hi Y11,

Just a quick post to remind you about what you have to do on Thursday, and how best to revise. 

First of all, here's the exam guide for this paper:

Past papers are available on the AQA website. I tweeted links to every past paper yesterday. Search our timeline: @BeverleyHighEng

Apart from your annotated anthology and other notes from class, the best place to go to make sure you know the poems is BBC GCSE Bitesize.

The good news is that Section A usually allows you to write about one of your favourite poems. There's usually one question which is quite open (eg. how is a character presented through language?) which will give you options. 

Check out each of the past papers and decide what you would have done for each one. This will tell you exactly how ready you are for the exam. 

My advice is to revise the poems in thematic clusters and to think about how they compare. The docs below give you some ideas about how to compare and contrast two poems:

You can also find more blog posts about the poems by browsing by topic on the right hand side of this blog's homepage. My most popular blog post is this model answer to a question on Ozymandias and The River God.

As for Section B (Unseen Poetry), please look here for my thoughts about how to approach an unseen poem. Don't fear it. They don't pick anything too difficult - but do expect a simple poem with a central metaphor. Ask yourself: what is this poem really about? Again, check out the past papers and see how you react when faced with an unseen poem.

Finally, make sure you know all your poetic terms by taking a look here.


Good luck everyone!

Please feel free to comment or tweet your last minute, panicky questions!


Mr M