Over three lessons across two weeks, Year 8 write for readers who answer back. A Year 7 class at a partner school in another town has read Emily Dickinson's 'Hope is the thing with feathers' without any teaching, and has posted what puzzles them on a Padlet board run by the two teachers, open only to the two classes' school logins, with first names only, comments switched off and every post approved before it appears. There are eleven questions, among them why hope is a bird and not a light, how a tune can have no words ('And sings the tune without the words'), and what the storm stands for. Each Year 8 pair takes one question and posts an answer of about 120 words that quotes the poem and explains one technique. Before the next lesson Year 7 reply with a post of their own in the same column as the answer, saying which sentence lost them and what they still want to know, and some disagree with the reading itself.
Pairs rewrite and repost, Year 7 respond once more, and pairs post a final version. Each Year 8 student then writes in their book what the replies made them change, and what that taught them about explaining a metaphor.
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