Year 9 - English
How Simon Armitage writes about climate change in 'Futurama'
Simon Armitage: writing your world
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Study Guides
This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
In this unit, pupils learn more about how to read and write poetry by listening to words of wisdom from the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage. They read a range of his poems about his life and the wider world, and start to write increasingly poetically in response to them.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to respond to how Armitage presents ideas of the future and climate change in 'Futurama'.
Key Notes
- Armitage was inspired to write 'Futurama' by the COP 26 climate crisis summit.
- Armitage suggests that 'Futurama' describes ideas of uncertainty and anxiety.
- Armitage suggests that writing from an individual perspective is important because we all have different opinions.
- Moreover, Armitage suggests that writing from a mass perspective can sound too much like political speech.
Vocabulary To Learn
- apocalyptic: showing or describing the total destruction and end of the world, or extremely bad future events
- uncertainty: a situation in which something is not known or certain
- anxiety: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome
- perspective: a way of regarding situations, facts, etc, and judging their relative importance
- metaphor: a word or a phrase used to describe something as if it were something else
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- You should try to speak for other people in your writing.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain this English learning goal in two key points.
Armitage was inspired to write 'Futurama' by the COP 26 climate crisis summit. Armitage suggests that 'Futurama' describes ideas of uncertainty and anxiety.
2. Define this language term and use it in a sentence. 'apocalyptic'
showing or describing the total destruction and end of the world, or extremely bad future events.
3. Correct this common English misunderstanding.
Mistake: You should try to speak for other people in your writing. Correction: We all have slightly different opinions and ideas, so you should try to communicate your ideas and emotions to other people through your writing.
More Lessons In This Unit
- How Armitage writes about personal events and memories in 'Harmonium' Study Guide
- How Simon Armitage writes about hope in 'We'll Sing' and 'Only Human' Study Guide
- How Simon Armitage writes about human connection in 'All Right?' and 'Give' Study Guide
- How Simon Armitage writes about life in 'About his person' and 'Poem' Study Guide
- How Simon Armitage writes about news and media in 'Transmission Report' Study Guide
- How Simon Armitage writes about the world in 'Resistance' and 'Out of the Blue' Study Guide
- Simon Armitage and the power of poetry Study Guide
- Simon Armitage talks about 'I am very bothered' and 'My father thought it' Study Guide
- Writing about the self and the world with Simon Armitage Study Guide
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