The Highwayman - Medium Term Plan

This medium-term plan outlines an engaging series of lessons centred around the poem "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. The plan is crafted to develop pupils' reading skills through a variety of activities, each with a clear structure comprising a starter, introduction, development, and plenary. In the initial lessons, students are introduced to the poem and the concept of a highwayman, with discussions focusing on the first three verses and the mood they create. As they progress, pupils recap and delve deeper into the characters and their motivations, particularly Tim and Bess, using tasks such as drawing images based on descriptions and characterisation exercises to enhance their understanding and analytical skills.

Subsequent lessons incorporate literary techniques such as contrast and the P.E.E. (Point, Evidence, Explanation) method, encouraging pupils to compare characters, gather evidence from the text, and articulate their findings. Activities are designed to foster critical thinking, with exercises like cloze tasks, cartoon strips, diary writing, and constructing tension graphs. The plan also includes creative tasks such as writing similes and metaphors, hotseating to explore characters in depth, and the construction of a mind map to identify themes within the poem. Each lesson aims to build upon the students' abilities to infer, deduce, and express their ideas, culminating in the creation of a newspaper front page as a homework assignment to synthesize their learning experience.