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Lesson 5 of 5
  • Year 4

Performing 'I'm an Orchestra' by Laura Mucha

I can mark up a poem before performing it.

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Lesson 5 of 5
New
New
  • Year 4

Performing 'I'm an Orchestra' by Laura Mucha

I can mark up a poem before performing it.

Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and

Copyrights help

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. In the poem ‘I’m an Orchestra’, Laura Mucha compares the emotional life of a human to an orchestra.
  2. Poets might use devices such as repetition, rhyme or alliteration to enhance the sound of the poem read aloud.
  3. A metaphor is a way of describing something by saying that it is something else.
  4. Alliteration is when words that begin with the same sound are placed close together.
  5. Marking up a poem for performance involves adding notes to guide delivery, emphasising elements like tone & pace.

Keywords

  • Orchestra - a large group of musicians who play many different instruments together and are led by a conductor

  • Rhyme - the similarity of sounds between the ending syllables of words, creating a musical quality and pattern

  • Metaphor - a poetic device that makes a comparison between two things by stating that one thing is another

  • Alliteration - the repetition of the same sound found at the start of words that come close together

  • Marking up - the process of adding notes to guide delivery of a poem

Common misconception

Pupils may find it hard to mark up their own poems.

Model marking up the poem as a class, highlighting the different areas you might annotate. Pupils could mark up the poem in pairs or small groups.


To help you plan your year 4 English lesson on: Performing 'I'm an Orchestra' by Laura Mucha, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

You may wish to spend a whole lesson exploring and marking up the pupils' poems. You could then save the performances for a separate lesson.
Teacher tip

Equipment

You need a copy of the poem ‘I’m an Orchestra’, which is featured on pages 24-25 in the 2021 Otter Barry edition of ‘Being Me written by Liz Brownlee, Matt Goodfellow and Laura Mucha, for this lesson.

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2026), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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