Peace Poetry KS2 Workbook - Explore the poetry of WW1 - Ideas Festival Chelmsford
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Peace Poetry
KS2 Workbook
Explore the poetry of WW1
A National Lottery Heritage Fund project
By the Ideas Hub Chelmsford in partnership with
the Essex Record Office
Contents
Forward from the Ideas Hub Chelmsford 1 - 2 Timeline WW1
This workbook consists of worksheets and resources for young people 3 Objects and Images from WW1
to use when learning about the history of WW1 Poetry.
It includes images of artifacts which are part of Chelmsford Museums 4 What was the world like in 1914
handling collection, which can be booked out for schools to use.
5 - 6 “Pro War” Poetry
It also contains pictures and archive materials from Essex Records Who’s For The Game by Jessie Pope
Office.
7 - 8 War Sonnets
The production of this workbook was funded by the National Lottery The Soldier by Rupert Brook and
Heritage Fund and we would like to say, Thank You, to everyone to A Dead Boche by Robert Graves
plays the National Lottery for making the Peace Poems project
possible.
9 What the trenches looked like
Workshops on Poetry and WW1 Heritage can be arranged with the
following contacts: 10 Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac
Rosenberg
Poetry Circle Chelmsford
Kelli-Marie Sellwood: thepoetrycircle.chelmsford@gmail.com 11 - 12 Metaphors and Similes
Ideas Hub Chelmsford
Edith Miller: hosts@ideashubchelmsford.org.uk
13 Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Essex Record Office 14 Invent Your Own Similies
Valina.Bowman-Burns@essex.gov.uk
15 Personification
Book out Chelmsford Museums WW1 Handling Collection:
01245 605700 16 The Next War Wilfred Owen
View animated films of some of the poetry in this book at:
www.ideasfestivalchelmsford.org/peace-poems/ 17 Alliteration
18 Onomatopoeia
19 - 22 Write your own poetry
Objects and images from WW1 What was the world like in 1914?
Left: Brenda the dog collected To understand War Poetry of WW1, we need to understand it’s importance. There
money with her owner for the were no televisions, or laptops or mobile phones, most information would have been
British Red Cross in given through written materials, like posters, books, newspapers.
Chelmsford, they walked door to Below is a poster that was put up in Witham.
door.
Below Left: A drinking vessel
made from part of a shell
casing, this is known as
‘trench art’.
Below Right: An entrenching
spade, these were carried by
soldiers to build and repair
trenches.
Right:
Essex Volunteers
Trench Digging 1917 -
this would have been a
practice dig in Essex,
England.
Did you know that poetry was one of the most popular forms of communication. It
was taught in schools and children would have been able to recite many poems from
memory. List all the modern technology that you wouldn’t have if you were a child in
1914:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
3 4
Pro - War Poetry Answer these questions:
1. What is the game?
Jessie Pope was a famous female
poet of her time. Her work was ____________________________________________________
published in Newspapers and ____________________________________________________
magazines. Everyone would have
known of her work and heard her
poems. When War broke she
wrote many poems encouraging 2. Which questions in Pope’s poem will the hero say ‘I will!’ to?
men to join the army. ____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
Her poems glorified and romanticised war and she is often cited as a propaganda
poet, however, she was as everyone else was, unaware of the horror of trench
warfare which had never been seen on such a large scale, around19 million people
died in World War One. 3. Which questions will make a coward embarrassed?
____________________________________________________
Jessie Pope, published three books which collected poems on War that had been
published in newspapers, they were: Jessie Pope’s War Poems - 1915; More War
____________________________________________________
Poems (1915); Simply Rhymes for stirring Times (1916)
Who’s for the Game (1916) 4. What is the worst thing that could happen?
____________________________________________________
Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played, ____________________________________________________
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight? 5. What course of action is Jessie asking you to follow?
Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?
Who’ll give his country a hand? ____________________________________________________
Who wants a turn to himself in the show?
____________________________________________________
And who wants a seat in the stand?
Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much- Extension: Write as many words as you can which rhyme with War.
Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
Who would much rather come back with a crutch ____________________________________________________
Than lie low and be out of the fun? ____________________________________________________
Come along, lads – ____________________________________________________
But you’ll come on all right – ____________________________________________________
For there’s only one course to pursue,
____________________________________________________
Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
And she’s looking and calling for you.
5 6
War Sonnets Which sonnet is pro war and which sonnet is anti war and how do you know?
__________________________________________________________
Sonnets are a particular poem with a particular structure. Below are two sonnets, __________________________________________________________
both express very different views. Read through them. Count the syllables in each line - how many are there?
__________________________________________________________
The Soldier (1914)
__________________________________________________________
What is Rupert Brooke referring to when he says ‘songs of War’?
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
__________________________________________________________
That is for ever England. There shall be __________________________________________________________
What is a ‘Boche’?
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, __________________________________________________________
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; __________________________________________________________
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Looking at the Sonnet, The Soldier (1914), words at the end of each phase rhyme.
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. Can you link the ones that rhyme with each other with a coloured pen. And let’s label
them alphabetically. The first Rhyme is A and the second B... as below:
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less f I should die, think only this of me: A
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; That there’s some corner of a foreign field B
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; That is for ever England. There shall be A
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; B
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. Continue labelling the rhyming words in both poems, it helps to read the words out
Rupert Brooke (1887 - 1915)
loud. If there are words you don’t understand, look them up in the dictionary.
A Dead Boche (1918)
Now choose four lines in either poem and create a drawing which shows what the
To you who’d read my songs of War poet is writing about in the box below, or create a bigger drawing on a separate
sheet.
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
“War’s Hell! “ and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
7 Robert Graves (1895 - 1985) 8
What the trenches looked like:
Break of Day in the Trenches (1916)
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Barbed wire Only a live thing leaps my hand,
Sand bags
A queer sardonic rat,
Parapet
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
Elbow
To stick behind my ear.
rest Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
Ammunition You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Fire-step Less chanced than you for life,
Dug out
Duck boards
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe—
Just a little white with the dust.
9 Isaac Rosenberg (1890 - 1918) 10
Metaphors and Similes
Metaphor - A metaphor helps a writer make a point by comparing two things; here Th Th
the writer compares tears and a river; this creates a image in the readers head: be e C sw e d
he ry all ark
E.G. His tears were a river flowing down his cheeks. ar of ow ne
d W ed ss
ar us of
Simile - A simile also helps a writer make a point through comparing two things, co nig
the only difference is the use of the words ‘as’ or ‘like’. ul ht
d
E.G. His tears were flowing down his cheeks like a river.
Below in the poppy shapes are both metaphors and similes about the trenches
colour in the metaphors red and the similes in Blue.
‘P ‘B
ar opp be ent
e i ies gg do
nm w ar ub
s
an hos un le,
’s e de like
ve ro rs o
ins ots ac ld
’ ks
’
D ne As aw
im s
W gge
pa ht, I s
ho s
th an und im
bi
lig ea,
ro d e d
’s t th
s
ug th r a ro
fo at
h ick g wn
r t ’s
th g re in
he p
e re en g.
ga laye
m en
is
m d
h
ty
e,
th
e
Th
th e s Ra
wh e vi now in
ite llag la fe
ll l
bl e l y o ike
an ik
ke e a ver te
ar
t. s
Facts: Did you know, red poppies are a sign of remembrance and white poppies are
a sign of peace. In France, the cornflower is used as a sign of remembrance, it is a
Blue Flower with many petals.
11 12
Dulce et Decorum Est (1920)* Invent your own Similes
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Finish these sentences off then create some of your own.
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. As happy as a_______________________________________________
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; As scared as a______________________________________________
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. She swan like a______________________________________________
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling The snow fell like a___________________________________________
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling The blossom was as beautiful as a_______________________________
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, He was as scared a___________________________________________
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
Now invent some similes of your own:
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. __________________________________________________________
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
__________________________________________________________
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; __________________________________________________________
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, __________________________________________________________
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— __________________________________________________________
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory, __________________________________________________________
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
__________________________________________________________
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
Notes: The Latin phrase and title of the poem is from the Roman poet Horace, it __________________________________________________________
means: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
*this poem was written during WW1 and published in 1920 __________________________________________________________
13 14
The Next War (1917)
Personification War’s a joke for me and you,
While we know such dreams are true.
Personification is when the writer gives non-human subjects human traits - Siegfried Sassoon
or characteristics.
Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Below are Objects and Human Actions or Characteristics, match them up Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
and then create sentences. Top Tip, there are no wrong answers! Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Objects Things a human
can do:
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.
He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,
Bullets Danced We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Poppy Jumped Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
Helmet Running No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
Doves Shook my hand And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
Mud Looked at me
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
Barred Wire Smiled
What is it that Owen has personified in this poem?
Sunrise Laughing
__________________________________________________________
Clouds Dreaming
Example, personification sentence: __________________________________________________________
“The bullets high pitch laugh travelled through the air”
List the characteristics or actions that Owen uses in his personification.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
15 16Alliteration Onomatopoeia
Alliteration is when two words begin with the same letter or sound. For ex- Onomatopoeia is when a word imitates its sound, e.g. A bomb goes boom
ample, Angry Animals or Knowing nothing. Below are images or War Time
objects, write a sentence which uses alliteration for each one. Read the description below and then write an onomatopoeia for each
one; Find a description for the onomatopoeia listed below.
A WW1 Gas Mask.
Extension: Write a sentence for each onomatopoeia and its description
__________________________________
Description Onomatopoeia
__________________________________ Fire
Mud
__________________________________
Rain
Helmet with bullet holes, this was most Ice
probably used for target practice.
Groaned
__________________________________
Grunted
__________________________________
Rumbled
__________________________________
Thud
Sizzling
Bullets
__________________________________ List as many Onomatopoeia words as you can:_____________________
__________________________________ __________________________________________________________
__________________________________ __________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
17 18Write your own poems WW1 affected people from many different Countries and from all walks of life. These people were Mothers, Sons, Daughters, and Fathers. Imagine a person, list their attributes; What do they like? Where are they from? How old are they? Were they directly involved in the war or not? Now write a poem to express their feelings and thoughts about World War One. Maybe use a portrait on the right as a starting point. 19
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Poetry Space
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Use this space to experiment with your own poetry and illustrate your _________________________________________________
poems. You can start with a mind-map or use the space it to note down _________________________________________________
research.
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
21 22You can also read
