Walking Away - AQA GCSE Poetry

Walking Away

This two-lesson mini-unit explores Cecil Day-Lewis’s ‘Walking Away’ in detail. Designed for GCSE pupils studying the AQA Love and Relationships cluster, this resource studies the poem in depth and explains how to write an essay comparing it to other poems from the anthology. The resource is made up of a 59-slide editable PowerPoint presentation and 7 accompanying worksheets.

The two lessons contain the following:

Lesson One

Context – A brief outline of Cecil Day-Lewis’s life and factors that may have inspired the poem.

First Contact – An initial reading of ‘Walking Away’ with a glossary included. Comprehension questions with example answers.

Exploring Meaning – Analysing ‘Walking Away’ in detail. Exploring key imagery and answering questions that delve deeper. Model answers provided.

Essay Writing – An essay question to assess initial understanding. A model answer is included.

Lesson Two

Themes – Analysing the themes of ‘Walking Away’: parent/child relationships, memory, time, distance and growing up.

Language – Exploring Day-Lewis’s use of language. An analysis of imagery and a line-by-line examination of the poem, with questions and answers.

Structure and Form – How Day-Lewis uses the first-person perspective, direct address, caesura, rhyme and enjambment.

The GCSE Exam – How to write a comparison essay. Comparing ‘Walking Away’ with ‘Before You Were Mine’ and ‘Mother, Any Distance’. Model answers included.