Today I observed Sophie’s lesson with her Year 12 English student Irene. Sophie started the session by going through the responses Irene wrote for homework whilst Irene annotated a new poem by herself. I think it is good that Sophie gave Irene some time to annotate the poem without any help so that she could get an understanding herself of the poem’s meaning. They then went through the feedback from Irene’s reading comprehension homework. Irene’s responses were really great but Sophie gave some advice for a few of the questions to help her achieve full marks in the future.

Then they started to go through the next poem together and I liked how Sophie asked Irene for her initial impression of the poem and what she thinks it’s about. They then went through Irene’s annotations together and then read through an overview and analysis of the poem and expanded on the ideas mentioned in the analysis page.

After going through the first poem they moved onto a new one, starting by Irene reading out the new poem. They then talked about what they thought the poem was about and the main themes and important sections of the poem. They then talked about further analysis of the poem and read through an overview of the poem. Next, they went through a quote table including some of the most significant quotes of the poem and they talked through further analysis of those quotes. Then they started mapping out an essay to a question Irene was given at school using the three poems they have analysed together so far.

It was great to observe this lesson!! Amazing job Sophie!!

Sophia McLean