To read and analyse a poem

Key Stage 2

English

The British by Benjamin Zephaniah

﻿Hello everyone. It's Mr. Brown here with your English lesson. And it is a really exciting one because we're going to read the poem, "The British" by Benjamin's Zephaniah. Last lesson, we prepared for it. We did some work on historical context. We learned about Benjamin's Zephaniah, but now it's time to actually read the poem. So let's not hang around. Let's get started. Our learning objective for today is to read and analyse a poem. In this lesson, you will need your exercise book or a piece of paper, a pencil, pen, something to write with. And most definitely your brain. Let's start with a reading warmup. And our warmup today is all about word links. Often, a comprehension question would ask you to make links between two different words that might have a similar meaning. For example, which word tells you that Benjamin Zephaniah was well known? That was a question we had in our last lesson. And we had to find the word famous to tell us that Benjamin Zephaniah was well known because we know famous means the same as well known. So let's go through and make links with these other words. You've got old, cherished, nervous, and hurrying, and you need to link each of those with one of these, anxious, rushing, loved, and ancient. Can you pause the lesson and see if you can link each of those words with another word on the opposite side? Off you go. Okay. I hope you've had a chance to do that. If you haven't, you can still pause the lesson and have a go now. Let's slowly go through them ourselves. So we've got old first. Okay, our options, anxious, rushing, loved, and ancient. Now, old and anxious. I know don't mean similar. They are very different words. Rushing and old, Nope. Old and loved, could be. Old and ancient. I know ancient, you talk about ancient history. So ancient means when something has happened a long time ago, old is someone that can be old, but it can also mean something that happened a long time ago. 'Cause you can say, you know, that joke is old if someone told it a long time ago. So I think old and ancient seems like a good link. Yes, correct. Okay. Cherished is the next one. If you cherish something, it means you hold it very close to your heart. It's very important to you. Not anxious then, not rushing. Loved seemed like the one for me. I cherish it. I love it. Yes. There's the link, okay. Nervous and hurrying are the last two. And I've got anxious and rushing. Now I know that hurrying means to do something fast. I'm hurrying to get there. Rushing is to do something fast. I am rushing to get there. So that seems like a good link, which must mean that nervous and anxious are a good link. Yes. And hurrying and rushing. Good. Well, done. Okay. Let's move on. And it is now time for "The British" by Benjamin Zephaniah. We are going to read the poem. Okay, here we go. The British serves 60 million. Take some Picts Celts and Silures and let them settle. Then overrun them with Roman conquerors. Remove the Roman conquerors after approximately 400 years, add lots of Norman French to some Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings. Then stir vigorously. Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans, Trinidadians, and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Sudanese. Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians, and Pakistanis. Combine them with some Guyanese and turn up the heat. Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians, Iraqis, and Bangladeshis together with some Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese, and Palestinians, then add to the melting pot. Leave the ingredients to simmer. As they mix and blend, allow their languages to flourish. Binding them together with English. Allow time to be cool. Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future. Serve with justice and enjoy. Note, all the ingredients are equally important. Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter, unpleasant taste. Warning, and unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain. Give justice and equality to all. Okay. Just going to let that sink in. I always, whenever I read a poem to a class, I always, first of all, just ask them simply for their first impressions. Did you enjoy the poem? Why or why not? The thing about poetry is it is completely up to you. You may have loved that poem, or you may not have liked it and both are valid answers. As long as you can justify why you feel a certain way? I feel like they're both great answers. So did you enjoy the poem? Why or why not? What was the poem about? What was the poem about? What do you think? If you want to, you can tell the screen, I would love to hear your answers, or I think this is a great lesson to be able to pull in a family member, parent, or a carer or an older or younger sibling to sit with you, to talk to them. What did you think the poem was about? Because there was lots and lots of different nationalities in there, wasn't there? Last lesson you made a prediction of what you thought the poem might be about. Were you close with your prediction? Or was it very different to what you expected the poem to be about? Because the poem was called "The British" and yet there were lots and lots of other nationalities in there, wasn't there? Let's talk about the poem's style. There's something familiar about the style of this poem. Can you work out what it is? I feel like the style of this poem reminds me of something else that's not a poem. Do you know what it is? A recipe, a recipe. Well done if you spotted that. A recipe tells you how to cook something. That's what a recipe is. It's instructions for how to successfully cook something. That might be a cake, it might be a meal. It doesn't matter. It just means that a recipe is instructions for how to cook something that you will eat. Here is an example of a recipe. And this is a recipe for pancakes. First pour 100 grammes of flours into a bowl, flour into a bowl. Next, add two large eggs. After that 300 millis of milk should be added, mix together well. Can you hear it's sounding actually like the poem, isn't it? Put a pan on the stove to get hot. When hot, add a thin layer of the mixture, cook on both. It sounds like "The British", the poem. Let's have a closer look at it. What clues are there in the first six lines of the poem that tells us that this has been written in the style of a recipe? What clues are there in the first six lines of the poem and the title, I guess? I guess just looking at the excerpt from the poem, there, anything that jumps out at you and you think, yeah, that reminds me of a recipe? Because there's a few examples. Serves 60 million straight away. Makes me think, okay. Serves. Serves is something you say when you're talking about a recipe, you know, you might say, a cake serves six to seven people. "The British" serves 60 million and that's roughly the amount of people that lived in Britain. Wasn't it? Then you've got things like take some, when you usually say take some flour or take some sugar, let them settle. That's very much a phrase that you would hear in a recipe. Add lots of, and then the end stir vigorously, your recipe often tells you to stir something. What are the words in bold all examples of? Chileans, Jamaicans, Dominicans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Turkish, Japanese, what are all those words examples of? These are all examples of nationalities. Now, nationality simply means belonging to a particular country. For example, someone from the country, Chile, their nationality, they are a Chilean. That is their nationality. If the problem is written in the style of a recipe, what are all the different nationalities meant to be? What are they representing? All the different nationalities? What do you think? If it's a recipe, then all the different nationalities are, of course, the ingredients, the things that have to go in to make the end product. I want to draw your attention to the note at the bottom of the poem. It says all the ingredients are equally important. Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter, unpleasant taste. So this is a note from, it seems like the, the writer himself. It seems like this is a note from Benjamin Zephaniah to you, the reader about the recipe. And he's referring to making sure that you understand, and you treat all the ingredients equally all the way through the process, making sure that everything has its own equal importance in this recipe. Now he says equally important there. And that led me to think about the word equality and that word even comes up if you look down the bottom in the warning, give justice and equality to all, and it's a really important word. Equality means the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. What an important message that is coming through this poem, understanding that all of these different ingredients, the nationalities, come together to make something which is Britain and they all play their own equal parts. Not one is more important than another. That is a really big message at this point. And the word equality shined through for me, talking about the fact that everyone should be treated equally. Here is a quick glossary of some of the nouns that appear in the poem. You've got Picts and Celts, and Silures, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Bajans, Guyanese, and Kurdish. These are some of the nouns that I think you might not have come across before. I'm not going to go through them. But if there are any that you don't know, pause the lesson now, take your time, read through. You will definitely know some of these because you might have studied them in school before. But any of these that are not, this is a good opportunity to refresh or learn about some new groups of people that have settled in Britain before. Okay. Your task for today. I want you to reread the poem. Now we know that Benjamin Zephaniah was trying to write in the style of a recipe, can you spot any verbs that he used, which we would normally associate with a recipe? We're going to begin next lesson with this activity. So keep your ideas safe and bring them next time. So any verbs that you could spot in the poem that made the link between a recipe and this poem, any verbs that you might spot normally in a recipe that are appearing in Benjamin Zephaniah's poem. Okay, well done. What a brilliant poem. Really interesting, unexpected. I've never seen a poem written as a recipe before and such a important and clear message that we are all equal in Britain and that every nationality working together makes this country great. Okay. I look forward to seeing you next time for more work on this incredible poem. Bye bye.

To read and analyse a poem

To read and analyse a poem

No lesson available

Lesson appears in

UnitEnglish / The British by Benjamin Zephaniah

English