LESSON 4:
Turkeys are cool!
Poem:
‘Talking Turkeys!’, Benjamin Zephaniah
Resources and lesson preparation
Worksheet 35: Group talk skill cards – cut into individual cards Worksheet 36:Planning a performance
Copies of the poem
It would be useful to gather a miscellany of images of Christmas and turkeys, and of relevant aspects of Afro-Caribbean culture; also, varied items that could be used as costumes, props and scenery. Raid your local scrap store or junk shop. Some images are provided on the CD-ROM.
Starter
Split the class into groups of three. Display the first four lines of ‘Talking Turkeys’ as an OHT, and give groups three minutes to devise a presentation, one person reading, the other two acting out the lines.
Alternatively, useICT Activity 1as a way into the poem, asking students to recreate the lines from the fragments.
Introduction
Ask the class what was difficult about the Starter task. Concentrate on difficulties associated with group organisation and getting on with the task, but also with finding something to act from the lines (it’s difficult being a turkey!)
Hand out to each group a set of cards from Worksheet 35. Give them a few minutes to sort the cards into rank order of importance. (Tip: ask them to ‘diamond-rank’ the cards, i.e. most important card at the top, then two joint-second most important cards; three joint-third cards; two joint-fourth; one least important; put aside the rest.)
Take feedback, create and display a class set of essential rules for successful group talk. (This activity is worth taking time over – the whole lesson if necessary.)
Now ask a couple of groups to perform their ‘living illustration’ of the first four lines of the poem, and use audience responses to these performances to generate some criteria for successful performance (– do they work best with big gestures and stillness?).
Development
Ask the groups to develop and rehearse ‘living illustrations’ for the whole poem. Use Worksheet 36to help with this.
Hand out any random scrap items you have gathered. (Tip: you could select a couple of students to be group talk assessors, circulating among the groups, listening and watching, and making notes judging the work against the agreed ‘successful group talk’ criteria.) Stop the groups part-way through the process to get them to talk about howthey are working together and ideas they have for the ‘living illustrations’, then ask them to continue.
Framework Objectives: Year 7, S&L 15 Develop drama
techniques to explore in role a variety of situations and texts or respond to stimuli
Learning Objective:
Use ‘living illustrations’ to help ‘visualise’ a text
Plenary
Watch some performances and ask the audience to give the performers some feedback with reference to the agreed success criteria. (If you have appointed any, ask the assessor students to give feedback on how well groups worked together.)
Suggestions for writing
Students create their own poem in imitation of ‘Talking Turkeys’. You might wish to suggest possible subjects (e.g. ‘Be nice to your teachers/parents/biscuits this Christmas/holiday/tea-break’). The poem could first be modelled, and it might help to use Zephaniah’s structure with its reiterative rhyme and repeating rhythms.
NOTES
● ‘To a Fish’ and ‘A Fish Answers’ by James Leigh Hunt (Indie, Lesson 7) also deal with a clash between animals and humans.
