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Lesson 9 of 5
  • Year 5

Exploring themes of hate and anger in 'The Wall'

I can reflect on poetry with themes of hate and anger, writing a personal response to a poem.

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Lesson 9 of 5
New
New
  • Year 5

Exploring themes of hate and anger in 'The Wall'

I can reflect on poetry with themes of hate and anger, writing a personal response to a poem.

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

Copyrights help

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. 'The Wall' uses symbolism - the use of objects, images, or actions that represent ideas beyond their literal meaning.
  2. The wall in the poem can represent a physical isolation as well as an emotional one.
  3. A poem can have several meanings and interpretations; each person’s response can be different and unique to them.
  4. We can respond to a poem by writing a personal response to it.

Keywords

  • Symbolism - the use of objects, actions or ideas to represent deeper meanings or concepts

  • 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

Not all pupils may be familiar with symbolism, especially common symbols.

To support pupils, adults could model out loud the associations that can be made about the objects .


To help you plan your year 5 English lesson on: Exploring themes of hate and anger in 'The Wall', download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Personal responses will be unique to the individual. Model referring back to the poem to support pupils when writing.
Teacher tip

Equipment

You need a copy of the 2021 Otter Barry edition of ‘Stars with Flaming Tails’, written by Valerie Bloom and illustrated by Ken Wilson Max for this lesson.

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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