Curriculum Portal

neurologyYou need to know

• War poetry can recruit, commemorate, protest, mourn, challenge propaganda, or bear witness, depending on its speaker, audience, and purpose.
• The First World War (1914–1918) reshaped European politics and killed approximately 20 million people.
• The Battle of the Somme (1916) alone caused over 1 million casualties in five months.
• Jessie Pope wrote 'Who's For The Game?' as recruitment propaganda in 1915.
• In 'Who's For The Game?', Jessie Pope uses sporting metaphors, direct address, and rhetorical questions to make enlistment appear attractive and to pressure men to volunteer.
• Rupert Brooke wrote 'The Soldier' in 1914, before ever seeing combat.
• In 'The Soldier', Rupert Brooke uses the sonnet form, idealised natural imagery, and religious imagery to present patriotic sacrifice as noble and spiritually meaningful.
• Wilfred Owen wrote 'Dulce et Decorum Est' after experiencing gas warfare, and he died a week before the Armistice.
• In 'Dulce et Decorum Est', Wilfred Owen uses grotesque sensory imagery and bitter direct address to expose the suffering of soldiers and challenge patriotic rhetoric about noble sacrifice.
• 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' means 'It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country'.
• Seamus Heaney's 'Casualty' (1979) responds to Bloody Sunday (1972) and elegises Louis O'Neill, who was killed by a British Army armoured vehicle three days after Bloody Sunday rather than during it.
• In 'Casualty', Seamus Heaney uses private mourning, conversational language, and fishing imagery to complicate ideas about public allegiance and personal freedom.
• Ciaran Carson's 'Belfast Confetti' responds to bombings during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
• In 'Belfast Confetti', Ciaran Carson uses fragmented syntax, disruptive punctuation, and violent imagery to enact the confusion and violence of urban conflict.
• Yaryna Stomina survived the 2022 Mariupol siege and was deported by Russian forces.
• Yaryna Stomina's 'Sunflowers' presents the siege of Mariupol from a Ukrainian civilian survivor's viewpoint, using stark images of destruction and sunflower symbolism to bear witness and express resistance.
• The sunflower is Ukraine's national flower and a symbol of resistance.
• Propaganda uses language selectively to persuade a public towards a political end.
• An elegy is a poem that mourns the dead.
• Iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet, with each foot usually containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, usually producing ten syllables in each line.
• A Petrarchan sonnet has 14 lines and is usually divided into an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six lines, while its volta usually marks a turn between or within these sections.
• Caesura is a pause within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation.
• Modality expresses degrees of certainty, possibility, or obligation through modal verbs such as 'must', 'should', 'might', and 'will'.
• Nominalisation turns a verb or adjective into a noun to raise register.
• Register is the level of formality and word choice matched to a specific audience.
• Transactional writing serves a real-world purpose—to inform, persuade, argue, or explain.
• A speech directly addresses a specific audience, sequences points clearly, supports claims with evidence, uses an audience-appropriate tone, and ends with a summary or call to action.
• A formal letter states its purpose early, organises evidence into logical paragraphs, maintains a formal tone, and closes with 'Yours sincerely' for a named recipient or 'Yours faithfully' for an unnamed recipient.
• An editorial presents a publication's viewpoint, develops a clear argument using evidence and counterarguments, maintains a persuasive tone, and ends with a decisive conclusion or recommendation.
• A report uses a clear heading and sections, presents evidence and findings in a logical sequence, maintains a formal and objective tone, and ends with a conclusion or recommendations.
• An obituary announces a person's death, sequences significant events and achievements from their life, uses specific details and a respectful tone, and closes by reflecting on their legacy.
• A testimony identifies the witness and event, recounts relevant experiences in a clear sequence, uses precise details and a formal, factual tone, and closes by confirming the main evidence or significance of the account.
• Anaphora is the repetition of an opening word or phrase at the beginnings of successive clauses, lines, or sentences.
• Tricolon is a three-part list used for rhetorical impact.
• A witness poem bears witness to a public event through direct experience, reported experience, or imaginative representation.
• Testimony is a formal spoken or written account of what a witness has experienced.
• The same content written for a tabloid, a broadsheet, and Hansard will use three different registers.

• Identify and name at least three rhetorical techniques in an unseen war poem.
• Quote from a poem accurately using inverted commas and a precise line reference.
• Compare two poets' responses to conflict using named techniques.
• Rewrite a poem in a different transactional form, such as a speech, formal letter, editorial, report, obituary, or testimony.
• Match register to a specified audience.
• Use modal verbs such as 'must', 'should', 'might', and 'will' deliberately to express different degrees of certainty, possibility, or obligation.
• Use nominalisation to raise a sentence's register.
• Structure a speech, formal letter, editorial, report, obituary, or testimony using the distinctive conventions of the chosen form for address, sequencing, evidence, tone, and closing.
• Deploy at least two named rhetorical devices in their own persuasive writing.
• Distinguish propaganda from witness poetry using textual evidence.
• Explain the effect of caesura on a line's meaning.
• Explain the effect of a volta on a sonnet's argument.
• Write a 400–500 word transactional response to an unseen war poem.
• Edit their own writing using a success-criteria checklist.
• Peer-review another student's writing using structured stems.