Analysing a poem: every pair's reading of 'crawls' in Tennyson's 'The Eagle' on one shared board.

Year 8 have read Tennyson's six-line poem 'The Eagle' and can name its techniques, but their comments on effect all sound alike. The teacher opens one Microsoft Whiteboard board for the whole class on school accounts, with the poem in large type in the middle, and pairs join it on their devices. Each pair adds a sticky note beside one of four words, 'crooked', 'wrinkled', 'crawls' or 'thunderbolt', saying what the word makes them picture. Within five minutes fifteen notes are on the board for everyone to read. The teacher takes the notes on the line 'The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls' and drags them into clusters as the class watches: the sea is slow, the sea is tiny and far below, the sea is old, the sea is a living creature. The class decides which readings fit together and which two pull against each other, and each pair adds a second note under a reading it disagrees with, giving a reason from the poem.

Students then write a 'what, how, why' paragraph in their books on 'crawls' that uses one reading from the board that was not their own.

Tools: Microsoft Whiteboard Nine ideas for your own version in Generate