To identify key themes in the poem and create our own poem with a similar theme.

Key Stage 2

English

Poetry - The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

﻿Hi, everyone, Miss Vincent here for your next reading lesson. So this is our fifth and final lesson on the unit of the listeners, so well done if you've taken part in all of the lessons so far. If this is the first lesson that you're tuning into, I would recommend stopping the video here and going back to do the previous lessons first. But in today's lesson, we are going to think really carefully about the themes that come up in this poem, and then really excitingly, you will have a chance to write your own mysterious, spooky poem today, using some of those things that we've spotted, that the poet Walter de la Mare has done with his own poem. So let's get started with today's lesson. Here's our agenda for today's lesson. So we'll start with a reading warmup where we're going to think about the events that happen during the poem and sequence them, so put them in the correct order. We're then going to re-read the poem, and if you've done all of the previous lessons in this unit, I wonder if there are some bits of the poem that you can remember off by heart. Then we're going to have a think about what themes, what ideas come up throughout this poem. And finally, you'll have a chance to do some creative writing and come up with your own spooky poem, your own mysterious poem or short story. Okay, so let's have a think. In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper, you'll need a pencil or a pen, and you'll need your brain switched on, and in particular, your creative brain, so you're really thinking about being creative toward the end of this lesson. If there's anything that you need to go and get, then please pause the video, go off and get anything that you need and come back, press play when you're ready to start the lesson. Okay, fantastic. So hopefully we are ready to go. So let's start with our reading warmup. So for our reading warmup today, I would like you, sorry, to number the events that happen in the poem, so to put them in the correct order. So the first thing that you would need to do is read all of the statements that you can see. Then when you decided out of those four statements, sorry, what comes first, you need to put the number one next to it. So by the end, you will have four boxes, you don't need to write out the statements, you can just write four boxes and you will have the correct order of the sentences. So keep the boxes in the same order and just put the number in the correct box. So let me read you the statements. So the first one says that the traveller leaves on his horse. The second one says the phantoms listen from inside the house, the third one, the traveller knocks on the door for the first time, and then the final one, the traveler's horse eats the grass. So a really good skill for this type of question is to read each of the statements, choose which one comes first, and write the number one next to it. Then read the ones that are left, choose the one that happens then, the number two, and so on. So pause the video. Can you put these statements in the correct order? Off you go. Okay, fantastic, let's check your answers. So the very first thing that happened was that the traveller knocked on the door for the first time. So he says, is there anybody there? And he knocks on the door for the first time. Then we are told that the traveler's horse is eating the grass, it's chomping on the grass. Then the phantoms listen from inside the house, and finally, number four, the traveller leaves on his horse. So the order was four, three, one, two, if you kept the boxes in that order. If you moved the boxes around, then just think about which sentence you decided came in which position. Okay, well done for taking part in the reading warmup. In previous lessons, when we re-read the poem, we've used my turn, your turn. We've read the poem quite a few times now, so I think that we can have a go at reading the poem together. So while I am reading, I'd love it if you could read at the same time, following really, really carefully. So let's start, off we go. "The listeners." "Is there anybody there?" said the traveller, knocking on the moonlit door. And his horse in the silence, champed the grasses of the forest's ferny floor. And a bird flew up out of the turret, above the traveler's head, and he smoked upon the door again a second time. So remembering this part of the poem, there's a traveller who arrives at this door and he knocks and he knocks, but nobody answers, that's why he's saying, is there anybody there? And his horse is eating the grass outside, a bird is flying off out of a tower, and he's knocking and knocking and nobody's answering. Okay, let's read the next bit together, off we go. "Is there anybody there?" he said, but no one descended to the traveller. No head from the leaf-fringed sill leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, where he stood perplexed and still. So he is asking again, is there anybody there? But nobody, descended means nobody came down towards the traveller who's at the door. No head from the leaf-fringed sill, so no head, leaf-fringed sill, it's got lots of leaves on it, and a fringe is like, perhaps something that you have on your head, but also it could just be that some plants are hanging off it and nobody is poking their head out to look over into the traveler's grey eyes. And he's standing there perplexed, which we know means confused and still. Okay, let's read the next bit together, off we go. But only a host of phantom listeners that dwelt in the lone house then stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight to that voice from the world of men. Stood thronging the faint moonbeans on the dark stair, that goes down to the empty hall, hearkening in an air stirred and shaken by the lonely traveler's call. So lots of tricky words that we've looked at before in here. So, but only a host, a host meaning a large group, a group of phantom listeners, so ghostly listeners who live in the lone house stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight. So we know it's silent already, we've been told that, we know that the moon is shining, so that's something that's come up before. And they're listening to that voice from the world of men. So it's almost like there are two separate worlds, the world that the phantoms live in, and the world of men, which is where the travelling lives in. And let's think about the next bit, stood thronging the faint moonbeams, so filling the moonbeams that are coming in to the house on the dark stack, 'cause we know their stairs coming down that goes down to the empty hall. Hearkening, which means listening in an air stirred and shaken. So the voice, the lonely traveler's call, his voice is shaking up the air that they were in. Okay, let's read the next part together, off we go. And he felt in his heart, their strangeness, their stillness, answering his cry while his horse moved, cropping the dark turf neath the starred and leafy sky. For he suddenly smote on the door, even louder and lifted his head. "Tell them I came and no one answered, "that I kept my word," he said. So it tells us that the traveler's feeling a little bit strange about the fact that nobody is answering, and it's really, really quiet, but nobody is answering. So his horse is still eating the grass and he's standing underneath the starry and leafy sky. So that tells us there are some trees above him if the sky is leafy, and he then bangs on the door again, he smote on the door even louder and lifted his head. And then he says, "Tell them I came and no one answered, "but I kept my word." So he's told somebody that he would come. He kept his word, he kept his promise to them. Okay, let's read the last part together, off we go. Never the least stir made the listeners, though every word he spake felt echoing through the shadowiness of the still house from the one man left awake. Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, and the sound of iron on stone, and how the silence surged softly backwards when the plunging hoofs were gone. So no movement, no noise from the listeners, even though everywhere that the traveller said echoed inside this empty house. And he's the one man left awake, so that tells us again about this world of men and world of phantoms. And they heard his foot on the stair, it means he's putting his foot inside the bit of the saddle and the horse that he goes off, and the silence moves back, feeling his space in front of the house as he goes off, galloping away on his horse. And the iron on stone remember, is the horse's hooves that are on the horse's feet, the ay in shoes that are clattering against the paved area. Okay, good reading, thank you for joining me in reading. Okay, so now we're going to think about what themes come up in this poem. So what is a theme? What am I thinking about when I think of a theme? I'd like you to just take a moment. You don't need to pause the video, just take a moment to think to yourself, what is a theme? I wonder. Well, a theme is quite simply an idea or a subject that the poem is about, and sometimes it's something that again, comes up lots of times throughout the piece of writing. Now, a poem can have a theme, something that it's about, and a story can have a theme as well. So it's something that it's about, but that comes up lots of times throughout the story or the poem. So we're going to think about what themes the listeners is about. So what is this poem about? What do we find out about during this poem? So I would like you to pause the video and write down what themes you think come up in this poem. So you might have a think and you might think that one theme that comes up is the traveller knocking on the door and nobody answering. You might perhaps think that another theme is the moonlight, 'cause we hear about the moonlight quite a lot. We hear about listening, we hear about silence. So I want you to think of the different themes that come up throughout this piece of writing, this poem. Pause the video, make some notes, and press play when you're ready to move on. Well done, I wonder what themes you came up with. There are lots and lots of themes that you could have written, and it's your interpretation. So your idea of what the poem is about, so it's not really that there are any wrong answers, if you can explain to somebody, to an adult around you, if you can explain what your theme is, then perhaps you've identified a theme that I haven't. Some of the themes that I came up with were the theme of ghosts and phantoms, the theme of nighttime and moonlight that comes up a lot, the theme of mystery, the theme of silence and echoes. And you might have come up with lots of other ideas as well. Perhaps the theme of a leafy wild place that nobody's been to, or an old abandoned, empty house. So lots of themes come up throughout the poem. So the poem shows a contrast between two different worlds as the poet has chosen to write about it. There's the world of men, and then there is the phantom listeners. So we've got these two things and the poet, Walter de la Mare, talks about the traveller coming from the world of men, those are his words. And it's a little bit like the world of men is outside the door, and the world of the phantom listeners is inside the door, and the door separates these two worlds. And it shows a contrast, which means the two things are very, very different. You've got the outside, that's full of leaves and it's wild, and then we've got the inside that's very empty and very echoey and not much going on, just the phantom listeners. So what I'd like you to do now is I'd like you to think about these opposite ideas, these two different places, and I'd like you to pause the video and think of what things you can identify that you can think of to describe the two settings. And that can be describing what they look like, it can be describing what happens in them, and make a little list. So you might just take a little bit of your page and draw a line down the middle and write the world of men on one side and the phantom listeners on the other side, so that you can make two little lists. So I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at describing these two places based on what we've heard in the poem. So what is their outside and what is their inside? Pause the video, off you go. Okay, really well done. So here are some of the ideas that I thought of for outside and inside. So outside we have the traveller, and inside we have the phantoms, so those are two opposites already. Outside they're loud banging and there's shouting into the house, but inside there's only silence, there's echoing and there's listening. So it's the opposite, one person doing the shouting and the banging and the others, just doing the listening. Outside we've got an overgrown wild forest, and inside we've got an empty hall and dark stairs going up. So there are real opposite ideas here between the world of men and the phantom listeners, the outside and the inside, almost separated by the door the traveller is banging on. Another thing that comes up a lot in this poem is unanswered questions, because I know that I have a lot of unanswered questions from this poem, and I wonder if you do as well. So I'd like us to think about what unanswered questions we have, because the poet hasn't told us all of the details. He hasn't told us who the traveller is, why he's there, who he promised that he would come. We don't know lots of things, but we do have lots of questions perhaps that we don't have answers to. So I would like you to think about what unanswered questions you have. So for example, you might have an unanswered question of who is the traveller, or why did he come to the house? Now at the bottom of this screen, you can see some question words to help you think of some questions. So they might start with who, when, where, how, why or what? So you might have some unanswered questions from this poem. And there are two examples on the screen of what they might be. So I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at writing down any unanswered questions that you have, for example, who is the traveller? Why did he come to the house? Maybe you have some more questions than that. So pause the video and write down your unanswered questions. Okay, fantastic, really good job. So, here are some of my unanswered questions. Who is the traveller and why did he come to the house, like you saw before? Why does he need to speak to someone, what's happened, why does he need to speak to someone? Who did he tell that he would come? Who are they, tell them I came, who are they that he speaks of? Who are the phantoms? Are they actually ghosts or are they just people hiding? So there are lots and lots of questions. Now your questions might look different than mine, and that's absolutely fine. So I wonder if you would want to have a go at answering some of your questions, you could be creative and you could think about your own answers. So if you'd like to, I think you could pause the video now and have a go at answering some of your questions, press play when you're ready to move on. Well done, fantastic. Okay, so now we have a chance to do a little bit of creative writing, so you'll have a chance to write your own poem. So you can be poets yourselves, just like Walter de la Mare. So it's going to take a little bit of imagination and a little bit of being creative that you could write your own mysterious poem, and you could use some of the things that Walter de la Mare used. For example, you might choose to use some rhyming. So he used, this is just a couple of sentences from the poem, no head from the leaf-fringed sill, leaned over and looked into his grey eyes where he stood perplexed and still, so he chose to do a little bit of rhyming. Remember, not all poems have to rhyme, so if you don't want to, that's absolutely fine. You might choose to use a little bit of alliteration. Remember when we looked at silence, surge softly backwards. So words starting with the same sound for effect, and you might choose to use an S sound or you might choose a different letter. You could copy Walter de la Mare, and you could take inspiration from him, and perhaps you can create some mystery in your own poem by leaving some unanswered questions. So leave your reader asking themselves some question, wanting to find out more. Okay, and then last of all, I've got some images and spooky images to help inspire you with your mystery poem. We've got a mysterious house in the big, bright moon, perhaps a little bit like the one that we could imagine in the listeners. You've got the moon and a big bird on a branch. You've got a tree, the spooky tree, the moon on a landscape, and then finally a horse, perhaps you might feel inspired by the horse in the poem, "The Listeners." So I'd like you to pause the video now and have a go at writing your own poem that's a little bit spooky. Don't worry if it's not very long, just have a go, okay? And then we can move on. Press pause to write your poem and then press play when you have had a go. Okay, well done for giving it a go, I bet that you have come up with some creative and fantastic ideas. The great thing about poetry is that it can rhyme, it cannot rhyme, it's all about putting a little bit of creativity and a little bit of description together. So really well done for working so hard, you have now completed today's reading lesson. Thank you so much for joining me in this lesson, on the poem, "The Listeners," and I hope that you enjoyed it. And I hope that you can share your poem with a parent or a carer because I'm sure you've worked really hard and you've been really proud of it. Thank you so much, bye.

To identify key themes in the poem and create our own poem with a similar theme.

To identify key themes in the poem and create our own poem with a similar theme.

Lesson details

Key learning points

Licence

Video

Lesson appears in

UnitEnglish / Poetry - The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

English