Mametz Wood (43-slide PowerPoint & 4 worksheets)

Teach Owen Sheers’s ‘Mametz Wood’ with this updated two-lesson resource for the CCEA GCSE English Literature Conflict poetry anthology. An editable 43-slide PowerPoint and four printable worksheets take students from first reading to a comparative essay on the lasting effects of war.

Lesson One – Context and imagery

Students explore the poem’s First World War context and learn how a photograph of a grave on the Somme inspired Sheers. Comprehension questions with suggested answers prepare them to analyse how images of fragile bones and wounded earth convey the human cost of war.

Lesson Two – Analysis and exam comparison

Students examine how language, form and structure shape the poem’s treatment of loss, nature and remembrance, using a model P.E.T.E.R. paragraph to guide their analysis. They then compare the battlefield discovery in ‘Mametz Wood’ with a mother’s experience of remembrance in Jane Weir’s ‘Poppies’.

The comparison includes a worksheet, suggested similarities and differences, an A LOT essay planning scaffold, a CCEA-style Unit 2, Section B question and a full model comparative essay.

Click the images to preview Mametz Wood.