Piano by D. H. Lawrence

This updated and enhanced lesson resource is designed to support students studying D.H. Lawrence’s Piano for the Edexcel IGCSE English Literature course. Combining contextual insight, close language analysis, and structured comparison, this resource guides students through a detailed exploration of memory, music, and emotional vulnerability. It now includes improved scaffolding, updated terminology tasks, and refined comparison frames to support a range of learners.

Lesson Features and Stages:

• Engaging Starter Task: Students reflect on the meaning of piano and their own nostalgic experiences, building personal connections with the poem’s themes.
• Exploration of Nostalgia: Includes an etymological and emotional breakdown of the term nostalgia, with links to the poem’s emotional tone and speaker’s longing for the past.
• Contextual Insight: Brief but meaningful context about Lawrence’s relationship with his mother, psychoanalytic influences, and the cultural role of the piano in Edwardian homes.
• Line-by-Line Analysis:Carefully crafted questions guide students through key poetic devices—synaesthesia, oxymoron, personification, enjambment, and biblical allusion—while fostering thoughtful interpretation. This activity could be conducted as a carousel.
• Structural Focus: Analysis of rhyme, stanza form, and rhythm encourages students to consider how poetic structure mirrors theme and tone. Includes structure-focused PETAL paragraph guidance.
• Extended Analytical Writing: Students write a PETAL paragraph on how Lawrence presents memory, with scaffolding.
• Comparison Task: A structured comparative writing frame helps students compare Piano with Poem at Thirty-Nine, drawing out similar and contrasting views on memory and parental influence.