Research, presentation and written tasks for the AS-A2 transition classes on ballads

This will be my last post on ballads. Guidance on the set reading for the Summer on "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" and Chaucer's "The Merchant's Tale" will follow.






Briefing Sheet for the AS/2 Transition Tasks for English Literature.

These task(s) are anchored to specific assessment objectives that should enable you to acquire key skills for A2: AO1,  AO2, AO3, AO4. (Look the A.O.s up in the A2 Course Booklet if you need to clarify what they mean.)

To succeed next year you will need to develop skills in independent learning. Your tasks will enable you to do this and you will receive a grade for your work: the presentation and the written piece(s) that follow up.)

Main Task
Individual/paired to present a ballad and produce a written appreciation of it.

1. Select a ballad: from the Year 13 Intranet folders: “Ballads”, “Ballads for Research”. The other folders also have information to help you with your task.
2. Research the literary traditions and historical contexts surrounding your ballad and analyse it. Use my mind-map, “Ballads – aspects of form” to help you make points on your choice of ballad: a traditional folk ballad, broadside or literary ballad.
3. Prepare a presentation of your ballad. To interest your audience you could:
• perform your ballad as a piece of drama, sing it, or as a silent movie with help from a narrator to speak the main scenes or speeches..
• show a Powerpoint with appropriate images and music
• Show extracts from films that illustrate a theme or idea from your ballad.
• Use paintings or photographs to illustrate key points and ideas.
• Select just few points to focus on if presenting a literary ballad (a longer, more complex poem by a named poet.)
• Film and present your ballad with accompanying music.
If you’ve chosen a literary ballad you could work in pairs. Otherwise it’s got to be a ballad each. Of course, in presentations you can get a friend to help you with your presentation and repay the favour when they present their ballad.

4. Write a critical commentary on your chosen ballad in which you analyse the poem and discuss the historical traditions surrounding it.
5. Write a broadside ballad of your own in four and three stresses (eight syllables and six) on a sensational event from the news. Use rhyme and rhyme schemes (e.g. ABCB, refrains, speech, etc. using the points mentioned in mind-map on aspects of the ballad form to make your ballad authentic. See also the Intranet Sources for Ballads if you need murders from the past, etc. Events from our time are fine, too.

Deadlines: the presentation – Mon. 9th of July – written commentary Fri. 13th July. ( See Patty or Me for the appropriateness of ballad choices, etc.)