Year 8 have studied William Blake's 'The Tyger' and read in the anthology's notes that Songs of Experience is the darker partner of Songs of Innocence. Today they put that to both books. The teacher has pasted every line of the two books, more than forty poems, into a Google Sheet, one row per line, with columns for book, poem and line, and a search cell that counts the lines containing whatever is typed into it, book by book, and lists them (the teacher has checked that it treats a question mark as a question mark). Each pair opens its own copy. Is 'The Tyger' unusual in being built from questions? Pairs search for the question mark and find a rival in Innocence, 'On Another's Sorrow'. Is Experience the darker book? They try 'night', 'weep' and 'joy', find all three in both books, and read the lines to see how each book uses them. Is 'The Lamb' its mirror? They find the words the two poems share, among them 'made', 'thee' and 'Lamb'.
Pairs then follow a word of their own choice from 'The Tyger' through both books, and each student writes in their book how typical the poem is of Experience, quoting a line from another poem as evidence.
Tools: Google Sheets Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.