Year 8 know that a sonnet has fourteen lines, and this lesson shows them how one is built. Each pair opens its own FigJam board from the teacher's link, on school accounts. On it are the fourteen lines of Christina Rossetti's 'Remember' as grey sticky notes in a jumbled heap, with the first line, 'Remember me when I am gone away', locked in place at the top. Pairs first recolour each note by the sound its last word ends on, so that 'away', 'stay', 'day' and 'pray' all turn yellow, and find they need five colours. Told that the first eight lines rhyme ABBA ABBA, they use the colours to rebuild them, then argue over the last six, where the pattern stops helping and they have to follow the sense. The teacher circulates, asks pairs to read a doubtful join aloud, and then shows Rossetti's order on the board.
Pairs mark the line where the poem turns, 'Yet if you should forget me for a while', and each student writes in their book what the speaker asks for before that line and what she asks for after it.
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.