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on the line activities
Poetry – compare and contrast
1. Click here
to look at two poems. Read them with your class.
- Do the poems make you feel optimistic or pessimistic
about the future?
- Which words or phrases make you feel this?
- Which messages are the poems trying to give you?
2. Compare the two poems
- How are the messages in the two poems the same?
- How are they different?
- How are the styles of the poems the same? Different?
- Is poetry a good way to get messages across to people?
Hopes and dreams
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| Photo by Crispin Hughes/Oxfam |
"I’d like to go
to secondary school when I’m older, and become a
nurse. I’d go wherever I was sent, but I’d like
to be a nurse here, in the village. All my friends and
family are here and we’re used to living with each
other." Mariam Saré age 12, Burkina Faso
(Your class can find out
more about Mariam, in the Burkina
Faso virtual journey.)
"I want to stop people killing animals and birds,
and destroying their habitat by cutting down trees. Animals
are living beings. They breathe air like us. We should
keep them." Youssouf Guinko, age 11, Burkina
Faso
"I’d like to be a teacher, if I can go to secondary
school. My parents have said they might be able to send
me. We need more schools and more teachers, so we don’t
have to walk so far to school. I could teach even more
pupils to become teachers in the future. And I’d
like to learn how to use a camera." Zenabu, age
10, Burkina Faso
Questions
- What do you hope you will be doing in the future?
- What do you hope will happen in the world in the future?
- What do these hopes say about your values and priorities?
- How do your hopes and dreams compare with the ones
Mariam and her friends talk about?
Compare your probable and hoped-for futures.
If these are different, what can we do to bring about
a better future for us and the wider world?
Collect your children’s
thoughts and write a poem together. It could be in the
style of Ben
Okri’s poem,
or a poem in the shape of one of the countries along the
line. Or you could use the letters of On the Line to start
each line. Whatever you choose, consider carefully:
- Who is your poem for? Is it for Mariam and her friends?
- What does your class want the poem to say to the people
who read it? Is it about your hopes and fears?
on the line virtual poetry book
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