Outcomes and Skills

Year 9 HEAP • Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe • Outcomes

The unit builds a connected set of skills: hearing the music of a poem, describing what it does, explaining how it does it, and judging what it means. The outcomes describe the whole five weeks, not a single piece of work.

Unit outcomes

Explain how Poe's poems create Gothic atmosphere and emotional pressure.
Analyse sound, rhythm, rhyme, repetition and refrain.
Analyse imagery, symbolism and the macabre with precision.
Explain how form and structure shape meaning.
Distinguish the poet from the speaker and analyse persona and tone.
Explain how setting and atmosphere contribute to meaning.
Build a close reading and a comparison from specific textual evidence.
Create an original creative or oral response that uses poetic techniques purposefully.

How the skills connect

Skill	What it looks like	How to practise it
Listening	Hearing stress, pace, rhyme and repetition before naming them.	Listen once without a copy, then follow along.
Reading aloud	Using breath, pause and stress to make sense audible.	Rehearse two lines and compare two readings.
Description	Using precise terms for sound, form and imagery.	Annotate a stanza with a consistent code.
Analysis	Connecting a specific choice to an effect on the reader.	Write one paragraph with two short quotations.
Interpretation	Building a contestable reading from patterns across a poem.	Test a claim against a second stanza.
Comparison	Using a shared basis to explain similarity and difference.	Complete a comparison grid, then write one paragraph.
Creation	Using Poe's techniques in an original piece.	Draft a vignette, stanza or soundscape and reflect.
Performance	Making interpretive choices audible and visible.	Rehearse, perform and revise after feedback.

I can statements

I can explain what makes a poem Gothic.
I can hear and mark stressed and unstressed syllables.
I can explain how rhyme and refrain shape a reader's expectations.
I can identify imagery by sense and explain its effect.
I can explain the difference between a symbol and a decorative image.
I can map a poem's stanzas, turns and repetitions.
I can distinguish the poet from the speaker.
I can describe a speaker's tone using evidence.
I can explain how setting creates atmosphere.
I can build a close reading from a short quotation.
I can compare two poems using a shared basis.
I can create or perform a response that fits the poem's mood and meaning.

Success criteria for analysis

Element	A strong response	A weaker response
Claim	Makes a contestable point about how the poem works.	Names a theme or says the poem is “dark”.
Evidence	Uses a short, accurate quotation and a line reference.	Paraphrases vaguely or quotes a whole stanza.
Analysis	Explains how the choice produces an effect.	Names the technique and assumes the effect is obvious.
Terminology	Uses terms such as metre, refrain and assonance accurately.	Uses jargon without explanation or mislabels it.
Structure	Moves logically from claim to evidence to conclusion.	Lists observations without a through-line.
Voice	Writes clearly and avoids overclaiming.	Uses melodrama or claims the poet's feelings as fact.
Context	Uses Gothic or nineteenth-century context where it illuminates the text.	Adds a biography paragraph unrelated to the argument.

Key terms

Term	Working definition
Prosody	The study of rhythm, stress, metre and sound in poetry.
Metre	The recurring pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Foot	A unit of metre, such as an iamb or a trochee.
Iamb	An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (da-DUM).
Trochee	A stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one (DUM-da).
Anapaest	Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one (da-da-DUM).
Catalectic	A line that is missing a syllable or foot at the end.
End rhyme	Rhyme at the end of lines.
Internal rhyme	Rhyme within a line.
Slant rhyme	An approximate rhyme, such as “morrow” and “borrow”.
Refrain	A repeated line, phrase or word.
Alliteration	Repetition of consonant sounds at the start of nearby words.
Assonance	Repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.
Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of words.
Onomatopoeia	A word that imitates a sound.
Imagery	Language that appeals to the senses.
Symbol	An object or image that carries meaning beyond its literal sense.
Persona	The voice or character created by the poet.
Tone	The speaker's attitude, inferred from language and rhythm.
Mood	The feeling created in the reader.
Volta	A turn in thought or feeling, often near the end of a poem.
Gothic	A mode interested in fear, decay, the supernatural and the limits of reason.
Macabre	Imagery concerned with death, corpses, tombs and decay.
Uncanny	The strangely familiar; something that unsettles because it is both known and alien.

Knowledge and skills

Knowledge

Poe's place in nineteenth-century American writing.
Features of the Gothic mode.
Core terms for sound, form and imagery.
The difference between speaker and poet.
How repetition and refrain shape meaning.

Skills

Reading aloud with control and purpose.
Annotating a poem for sound and image.
Writing a claim-evidence-analysis paragraph.
Comparing two poems on a shared basis.
Creating or performing an original response.

Next, read Poe, context and the Gothic for the historical and literary background. The sound and prosody page begins the close work on rhythm.