Lesson video

Hello, everyone, thank you very much for joining me, I'm Mr. Blackburn.

Today, we're going to read a poem called "A Sunset", but before we do, you'll need to make sure that you have a pen and paper, you'll need to make sure that you've turned off any notifications or anything which might distract you, and if you can, you'll need to try and find somewhere quiet to work.

And once you've done that let's get started.

Here's what we're going to be doing today.

We'll start off by reading the poem, before we think about what the poem might be criticising, then we'll look at an idea called irony before finishing everything off, drawing all of your knowledge together.

Let's start off then by thinking about a sunset.

Why might the poem be called "A Sunset"? What do you think it could be about? What does a sunset make you think about? What does it make you imagine? What time of year is it perhaps? What colours are there in the sky? Maybe you've been lucky enough to see some beautiful sunsets before.

How did it make you feel? What I want you to do is write a prediction about what you think the poem might be about based just on the title, "A Sunset".

So you might want to pause the video for a second and just write a prediction.

What will the poem be about? It will be so interesting to see if your predictions are right at the end of the lesson.

Here is the poem, "A Sunset".

"I watch a woman take a photo of a flowering tree with her phone.

A future where no one will look at it, perpetual trembling which wasn't and isn't.

I've taken photos of a sunset.

In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated until emptied.

I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

We went to the poppy preserve where the poppies were few but generous clumps of them grew right outside the fence like a slightly cruel lesson.

I watched your face, just out of reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right, bending her knees, tilting back.

I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face." What an interesting poem, that probably isn't about a sunset in the way that you imagined it would be.

There's some interesting vocabulary that I think we need to look at first, and then we're going to move on to think about what the poem is criticising.

Let's start off with this section of the poem.

"I watch a woman take a photo of a flowering tree with her phone.

A future where no one will look at it, perpetual trembling which wasn't and isn't.

I've taken photos of a sunset.

In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated until emptied".

The word perpetual means never-ending.

So this is a moment in time which has been preserved forever.

The perpetual trembling is important.

So perhaps the woman who was taking this photo, didn't have a very steady hand and she's introduced a blur into her photo.

Onto this section.

"I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

We went to the poppy preserve where the poppies were few but generous clumps of them grew right outside the fence like a slightly cruel lesson.

I watched your face, just out of reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right, bending her knees, tilting back".

So someone's trying to take a photo of these poppies and it's not going very well.

And he says, "The flowers are diminished by the lens".

Diminished means to be made smaller or become less than it was.

So maybe the flowers are being made less beautiful by the process of taking a photograph? Maybe the very fact that people are concentrating so much on taking a beautiful photograph of a flower, means they don't really appreciate the beauty that they're looking at? "I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

Now here, the poet describes a streetlight as having shined obnoxiously into his bedroom.

And obnoxious means something which is very unpleasant, in this instance, it's the way the streetlight might ruin his good night's sleep, or perhaps his view of the stars, in the same way that him using a flash when he takes a photo of a sunset ruins the photo of the sunset.

So hopefully you're starting to think about what the poet is saying about our relationship with nature.

Here are four options.

What do you think the poet is saying about our relationship with the natural world? Is he saying that we don't spend enough time admiring nature? Is he saying that actually our relationship with nature's just fine, thank you very much.

Is he saying that having a relationship with nature is important? Or is he saying that nature only looks good in photographs? Three, two, one.

Hopefully you've identified that the poet thinks it's really important that we spend time in nature, admiring it, not looking at it through our phones, not talking about it, but actually admiring the beauty of nature.

What does he suggest we spend too much time doing instead? Does he think we spend too much time talking about flowers? Does the poet think we spend too much time in nature, in general? Does he think we spend too much time walking or are we spending too much time trying to get the perfect photograph? Three, two, one.

Hopefully you've identified the criticism in the poem is about us trying to get the perfect photo of something in the natural world, while actually completely ignoring what's right in front of us.

What does the word diminished mean? Does it mean something which is never ending? Is it the point of change in a poem? Does it mean something which is very unpleasant? Or does it mean something becoming less than it was before? Three, two, one.

Diminished means becoming less than it was before.

So perhaps the beauty of that flower is diminishing while we take photographs of it.

The photograph will never be as beautiful as the real flower.

Excellent work.

Now we're going to look at what the poet's criticising.

We know that the poet doesn't think we spend enough time in nature, but what exactly is it that he's criticising? Criticising means to talk about something in a way which shows you disapprove of it.

So you don't like the way that people do something, you're disapproving of it.

Here are three options.

People taking photos of nature, people ignoring nature's beauty, and people focusing on getting the perfect picture.

I'm going to read the poem to you again, and I want you to decide which of those three, might be more than one, the poet is criticising in his poem.

"I watch a woman take a photo of a flowering tree with her phone.

A future where no one will look it, perpetual trembling which wasn't and isn't.

I've taken photos of a sunset.

In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated until emptied.

I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

We went to the poppy preserve where the poppies were few but generous clumps of them grew right outside the fence like a slightly cruel lesson.

I watched your face, just out of reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right, bending her knees, tilting back.

I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

So, which is it? Is the poet criticising people taking photos of nature? Is the poet criticising people ignoring nature's beauty? Or is the poet criticising people's focus on getting the right picture rather than on the natural world? Which do you think it is? Well, hopefully you've identified that the poet is criticising all three of those things.

He criticises us for taking photographs of nature, he criticises us for ignoring the beauty of the natural world, and he criticises the focus that we might have on taking the perfect photo rather than enjoying the moment.

We can link this criticism to the theme of appearance versus reality.

In his poem, we know that Banias criticises the way that people experience nature, because he feels we spend too much time on our phones.

He thinks that people are too concerned with getting an excellent photograph of the natural world, rather than stopping to appreciate its beauty.

I'll read the poem one more time, and I want you to think about where we might see this criticism of our obsession we're taking photographs in each section of the poem.

"I watch a woman take a photo of a flowering tree with her phone.

A future where no one will look at it, perpetual trembling which wasn't an isn't.

I've taken photos of a sunset.

In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated until emptied".

Where do we see him being critical of our obsession with taking photographs in this section? The beginning, certainly, what's he criticising? Well here, he criticises that rather than admiring the beauty of the blossom on the tree, the woman is concerned with photographing it.

A picture which no one is likely to see.

How many times have you taken photos of things which you thought were beautiful, that no one has ever looked at again? I know I have, I'm sure you might have done as well.

But I think we can also see criticism here, "In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated".

The reactions in real life to these pictures of a sunset are authentic, a feeling which is unlikely to be recreated by showing somebody a picture of the same sunset.

So, if you imagine watching a real sunset and taking the photos, your reactions are amazed at what you're seeing, it's beautiful, it's gorgeous.

The photograph that you've taken encapsulates those feelings, but when you show that picture to somebody else, that's not how they react.

So then, it just looks like any other sunset.

Okay, what about in this section of the poem? Where do we see what the poet is criticising here? "I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

We went to the poppy preserve where the poppies were few but generous clumps of them grew right outside the fence like a slightly cruel lesson.

I watched your face, just out of reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right, bending her knees, tilting back".

Where do you think the poet is criticising us here? Well, I think this is an example of criticism.

"Sunset the word holds more than a photo could".

And you'll notice that the pause symbol has just popped up.

I want you to pause for a minute to think about what the poet's criticising in this line.

Think about the word photo, think about word, what's he saying is more powerful? Pause the video, come back, see if you agree with me.

And, here's what I think.

I think that the poet is suggesting that even words create more of an emotional connection than a photograph does.

Pictures can't contain the beauty of an idea, words can express the beauty of an idea or an experience.

So photographs are a snapshot in time, whereas words might become part of our memories.

And what about in this section? "I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

Where do you think there's criticism in this section? I think the criticisms here, "This is my photo of a tree and bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

And, uh-oh, the pause symbol has arrived again, so I want you to pause for just a minute and I want you to think about what those three lines mean.

What's the criticism which is contained in those lines? Here's my idea, the tree in bloom is an idea taking shape, it's a metaphor.

The poet realises that we should slow down and enjoy the natural world rather than trying to capture it in a photograph, which will never create the same feelings of wonder.

The thought unfolding across somebody's face as they remember a sunset, is maybe more powerful than looking at a photograph of a sunset.

Well done if your answer is matched that, don't worry if they didn't, you might have interpreted it in a different way than I did.

Okay, three questions for you, and then I'm going to ask you to pause the video.

What does the poet criticise in the poem? What does the poet say about the power of words? And what does the poet realise at the end of the poem? I want you to answer these questions in full sentences, and just in case you think that you can't do that, here are some sentence starters to help you.

So pause the video, answer these three questions and then come back and we'll see if your answer's match mine.

Welcome back, here are my answers to those questions.

The first question I asked, what the poet was criticising, and my answer is, the poet criticises the way that people spend too much time trying to photograph nature rather than enjoying its beauty.

The second question asked, what does the poet say about the power of words? And my answer was, the poet expresses that the words are more powerful than photographs because words can express ideas and feelings in a way a picture can't.

And the third question asked, what does the poet realise at the end of the poem? The poet comes to the realisation that we should stop trying to capture images of nature, instead, we should try to appreciate nature and live in the moment.

Well done if your answers look like that, if they don't and you think there's something you might want to borrow from my answers, then now is the time to do it.

Well done, I hope you managed to correctly identify what the poet was criticising and what the poem was saying about our relationship with nature.

Now we're going to look at an idea called irony, and see how it's used in the poem.

Irony is probably a word which you've heard before, but lots of people use it incorrectly.

All irony means is we expect one thing to happen, and generally the exact opposite happens instead.

I'm going to show you some examples and explain why they're ironic.

Here's the first example, a pilot who's afraid of heights.

Why is that ironic? Well, we expect pilots not to be afraid of heights, their job is literally flying in the sky.

If they're afraid of heights, they're probably not going to be very good pilot.

So here we have a pilot who is afraid of heights, we expect them not to be, but they are.

That's an example of irony.

Here's another one, a teacher who fails a test.

Why is that ironic? Well, we expect teachers to know everything, and generally we do, but sometimes perhaps a fact might slip our mind for just a little bit, and we might not get 100% on every test we take.

It's never happened to me of course.

But because we expect teachers to be knowledgeable, it's surprising if that teacher fails the test, especially if their students pass it.

And here's another one, a mother who tells her children they're lazy, when secretly they've been making her a special dinner.

Now this is irony because we expect the mother to be right about her children, because we perhaps know that sometimes people can be lazy.

Instead, we're surprised that her children have been working really hard to surprise her.

And we might feel bad for these children that the mother has said that they were lazy in the first place.

Let's see if you can identify which of these four options is an example of irony.

Is it a seagull swooping and eating a child's ice cream? Is it a dog burying the bone in the garden? Is it a fire station catching fire? Or is it a garden gnome is stolen and nobody notices? Which of those four options is an example of irony? Three, two, one.

Hopefully you correctly identified a fire station catching fire is ironic.

Of all the places that might catch fire, we would assume a fire station is the last possible place, but it has, and that's an example of irony.

Now we're going to try to spot examples of irony in the poem.

So I'll read this section again and whilst I am, I want you to think about whether anything sounds ironic.

"I watch a woman take a photo of a flowering tree with her phone.

A future where no one will look at it, perpetual trembling which wasn't an isn't.

I've taken photos of a sunset.

In person, 'Wow', 'Beautiful', but the picture can only be as interesting as a word repeated until emptied".

Have you found any examples of irony in this section? Here's where I think we see irony.

The woman taking the photo which no one will look at, and her trembling while she's doing it.

And I think the irony here is that the woman has spent so much time trying to photograph the tree, that all of that time was wasted.

She's trembled, she's smudged the image, meaning her picture didn't represent the tree she was looking at at all.

So all of that time she spent was completely wasted, she's not seeing the beauty of nature with her own eyes, she's tried to capture the beauty of nature in a photograph, and she's failed.

Let's look in the next section.

"I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

We went to the poppy preserve where the puppies were few but generous clumps of them grew right outside the fence like a slightly cruel lesson.

I watched your face, just out reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right, bending her knees, tilting back".

Where's there an example of irony in this section? Hopefully you've picked out this part.

They went to a poppy preserve, there weren't many poppies inside the preserve, but lots of them were growing outside.

Why might this section be an example of irony? I want you to pause the video for a minute and write down some ideas about why this might be ironic.

And here's what I think.

They went somewhere specifically to see poppies, there were more poppies on the outside.

And despite that, the person that poet was with was still obsessed with taking a photograph of these poppies, missing the beauty all around them.

Their beauty was diminished by the lens of the camera.

So the irony here is going one place to see one thing, missing those things completely, and still focusing on taking a photograph of a flower rather than appreciating its beauty.

Okay, is there an example of irony in the last section of the poem? "I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

Can you find an example of irony? Well, I think that this is an example of irony.

"I who think I have something to learn from anything learned nothing from the street light that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom".

Pause the video again and see if you can identify why this might be an example of irony.

And here is my idea.

So maybe the poet had been annoyed by this streetlight ruining his views of the night sky, and despite this, he still turned a flash on and ruined his own photograph.

So he didn't learn anything from the fact that the light from the street light had been ruining his views.

So he turned a flash on when he was taking a photo of a sunset rather than admiring the beauty of that sunset himself.

Because when you try and take a photo of a sunset with a flash on, you end up basically with a photograph of nothing.

So he's ruined his own photo when he could have been making the memory of watching that sunset in real life.

Excellent work so far.

Now I want you to see if you can much these boxes to the correct quotation.

So I'll read each of the boxes and I'll read each of the quotations, and you need to decide which explanation lives with which quotation.

Box A says, the poet expresses his moment of realisation that we should take our time to admire the natural world.

Box B says, the poet exposes the fact that although we spend a lot of time photographing nature, we rarely look at those photos again.

And box C says, the poet reveals that he believes the time spent photographing nature, reduces our enjoyment of the natural world.

And at the top, there are three quotations, "A future where no one will look at it", "The flowers diminished by the lens", and, "A thought unfolding across somebody's face".

I want you to put those boxes with the right quotations, so pause the video for a second, decide which quotation matches which explanation, and then come back and we'll see if you were right.

And this is the order you should have had them in.

So a future where no one will look at it, matches with the poet exposing the facts that although we spend lots of time photographing nature, we rarely look at these photos again.

The flowers diminished by the lens matches with the explanation, the poet reveals that he believes the time spent photographing nature, reduces our enjoyment of the natural world.

And the thought unfolding across somebody's face, matches with the poet expresses his moment of realisation that we should take our time to admire the natural world.

Well done if you got all of these explanations matched with the right quotations.

So what do you know now? What can you tell me about the poem? I want you to pause the video and answer these questions in full sentences.

Once you've done that, resume the video and we'll see if our answers match.

Welcome back, here are my answers.

The first question asked, what does the poet tell us about how we should enjoy the natural world? And my answer is, the poet tells us that we should enjoy the natural world by experiencing it for real and talking about it.

He believes that these methods of enjoying nature are more authentic than taking photographs.

And the second question asked, what does the poet reveal about our obsession with taking photographs of nature? And I've answered, the poet reveals that our obsession with photographing nature diminishes our ability to really enjoy it.

We are so concerned with getting the perfect picture that we never stop to think about how perfect nature already is.

Your answers might look like that, well done if they do, if you think that there's something in my answers that you might want to include in your own, then you can add it in now.

Particularly, I think, about vocabulary like diminishes, that would look brilliant in an answer to a question like this.

So, did the poem match your prediction? How correct were you when you thought what this poem might be about? As a final exercise, I want you to write one sentence explaining whether your predictions were correct, and if they were, well done.

If they weren't, you might want to write an additional sentence suggesting how the poem was different than you thought it would be.

Excellent work today, everyone, well done.

Today, we've analysed a poem to think about what a poet was criticising about society.

And we've also thought about irony and how we might see those ideas displayed in the poem.

The last thing I'd like you to do is take the quiz at the end of the lesson, to prove to yourself how much you know.

Well done for all of your hard work today, you should be super proud of yourselves.

Goodbye.