Seamus Heaney: 'Poetic Voices' Study Guide for A Level AQA

Specifically written to support the 2015 AQA Language and Literature specification, co-teachable study resources will guide your students through all the prescribed poems for your chosen author. Explore the linguistic and literary methods by which poets present time, place, relationships and events, with in-depth commentary and activities.

I was really impressed

M Smyth, AVP Teaching and Learning and Peer Reviewer
Poems covered:
  • ‘Digging’
  • ‘Blackberry-Picking’
  • ‘Mid-Term Break’
  • ‘Night Drive’
  • ‘Broagh’
  • ‘Punishment’
  • ‘The Otter’
  • ‘Hailstones’
  • ‘Death of a Naturalist’
  • ‘Follower’
  • ‘Personal Helicon’
  • ‘Bogland’
  • ‘The Tollund Man’
  • ‘Strange Fruit’
  • ‘The Skunk’

Poem-by-poem Walk-through

  • Clear summary and insightful analysis are interwoven with questions and tasks, to deepen understanding and encourage independent interpretation
  • Focus on close reading and quotation analysis ensures students know the poems inside out

There is an abundance of information provided that signposts the students to what the examiners are looking for in a response

T MacCormac, Teacher & Peer Reviewer









Exam Focus

  • Prepare to ace the exam with practice questions, planning guidance, sample essays and student-friendly mark schemes for both AS and A Level

Plus! Indicative content for all activities!

What do teachers say about this resource? (9977)

A comprehensive and cohesive resource. There is a logical development from bigger picture to the individual poems. There is an abundance of information provided that signposts the students to what the examiners are looking for in a response.

The dual coding of the images for different task types is really helpful. They allows students to make a choice of what task they would like to complete in a way that suits their own learning style while also challenging students to complete a range of different tasks for each unit.

The inclusion of the word class glossary is extremely useful for those students who may need a little more support with this.

This is an essential resource to supplement the initial teaching of the poems. It could be used in a number of ways to support learning – with individual poems a student may struggle with, to contextual information of specific analysis. It could be used alongside teaching, as a support tool or as a revision option to recap. I would also argue that it is valuable to student of all levels – it sets the information out in a non-threatening or overwhelming way.

The resource matches the specification exceptionally well. The levels of analysis are made clear from the outset and for each unit it is made explicitly clear which AO that particular information links to.

An invaluable resource for anyone teaching Heaney .

T MacCormac, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

I was really impressed. I particularly like the fact that the questions are answered in the back, just to give us a little more support. Overall a brilliant companion to the resources I have already built up.

The language levels in the section for Methods for Language Analysis were detailed and clear to follow and I particularly like the example analysis boxes which clearly set out how to write about the different levels and therefore can be used as exemplars for students.

I thought that the stylistic analysis was detailed and coherent with lots of ideas that teachers may not have thought of and the student activities were well ordered, moving from Language questions, to Active learning and then to Discussion questions to really stretch thinking and finally, the extension questions which will be good for home learning tasks.

M Smyth, AVP Teaching and Learning and Peer Reviewer

I liked this resource. The writer obviously knows the poems of Seamus Heaney well and explains them clearly... [I particularly like] the poem summaries [and] the cross-referencing for themes... The definitions and examples of key terminology make use of the actual poems... The 'unpacking the question' and 'how to pick the right question' sections are useful – a lot of students find this difficult.

C Marshall, Teacher & Peer Reviewer (Seamus Heaney version)