Lesson idea 5.

1
Basic skill: Selection and retrieval
Learning context
Students need to know that the skills of reading are not all equally demanding, and that the need to
practise how long they spend on skills which require less or more of them as readers.

Teaching focus
This lesson reinforces students‟ understanding of the different demands of different kinds of questions by
practising more developed response to “How” questions (methods) than to “What” (content) questions in
Poetry.

Lesson activity
This lesson idea focuses on developing the ability to select, select and retrieve, explain, and interpret
and analyse.
Read the poem. Sometimes it helps to first read it silently, to get familiar with its meaning, then to read it
aloud to get familiar with its tone and mood.

Nettles, by Vernon Scannell

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.

‘Bed’ seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.

1 Multiple choice: select

In line 6, the word „tender‟ means:

a young b uncovered c sensitive d wounded

© Cambridge University Press 2018 Lesson idea 5.1: Basic skill: Selection and retrieval
 2 Short: select and retrieve
What phrase in the first four lines suggests that the nettles were like a hostile army?
3 Longer: explain (motive, relationship, situation)
How does the writer‟s use of language throughout the poem suggest that the father is fighting a battle
against forces likely to hurt his son?
4 Complete: interpret and analyse
How does Scannell present his feelings and ideas as a parent?

Support
For students aiming to develop core skills, provide meanings for: nettles (plants that sting); blisters
(watery raised lumps on the skin); billhook (a one-handed blade like a machete); honed (sharpened); pyre
(funeral fire). Please note, these should not be given to the students straight away.

Stretch
For students aiming to develop more advanced skills, compare the parent‟s feelings about a child in
Gillian Clark‟s poem, „Catrin‟.

© Cambridge University Press 2018 Lesson idea 5.1: Basic skill: Selection and retrieval