Exploring themes of sadness in 'The Land of Blue'
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I can reflect on poetry with themes of sadness, writing a personal response to a poem.
Key learning points
- ‘The Land of Blue’ is written by Laura Mucha and illustrated by Victoria Jane Wheeler.
- The poem uses symbolism - symbols that represent ideas beyond their literal meaning.
- The poem references colours; these can symbolise a range of feelings and emotions.
- We can respond to a poem by writing a personal response to it.
- Personal responses are reflections that we make about a poem after reading or listening to it.
Keywords
Symbolism - the use of objects, actions or ideas to represent deeper meanings or concepts
Imagery - the use of language to create a mental picture or sensory experience for the reader or listener
Interpretation - the process of understanding and assigning meaning to a poem
Personal response - reflections that we make about a poem after reading or listening to it
Common misconception
Pupils may not have much experience associating colours with feelings and emotions.
To support pupils, adults could discuss feelings and emotions and their associations to colour prior to the lesson. The Disney Pixar film 'Inside Out' would be a suitable starting point for this.
Teacher tip
Pupils could have physical copies of the poem to text mark, especially when focusing on imagery and the use of colour.
Equipment
You need a copy of the 2021 Otter Barry edition of ‘Being Me’ written by Liz Brownlee, Matt Goodfellow and Laura Mucha, illustrated by Victoria Jane Wheeler for this lesson.
Licence
Sign in to continue
Our content remains 100% free, but to access certain copyrighted materials, you'll need to sign in. This ensures we’re both staying within the rules.
P.S. Signing in also gives you more ways to make the most of Oak like unit downloads!
