Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

This fully-resourced and engaging lesson is designed for students preparing for the Edexcel IGCSE English Literature (4ET1) Poetry Anthology. Focused on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, the resource enables students to explore how the poet presents ideas about love through structure, imagery, and language, while supporting them in building strong exam-style analytical responses.

Lesson Features and Content:

• Engaging Starters: Interactive quizzes and reflective questions (e.g. How do you know when you’re in love?) prompt personal engagement with the poem’s core theme.
• Accessible Introduction to Form: A student-friendly guide to the sonnet form — including an entertaining breakdown of rhyme scheme, structure (octave, sestet, volta), and Shakespeare’s variation on the traditional Petrarchan form.
• Contextual Vocabulary Support: Key vocabulary (e.g. impediments, tempests, sickle, bark) is pre-taught and reinforced to support confident reading and annotation.
• Modern Translation Matching Task: A worksheet is provided for students to match Shakespeare’s language to a modern translation.
• Quotation ‘Exploding’ Task: Students select key quotations and ‘explode’ their meanings through guided scaffolded notes — supporting precise exploration of imagery and authorial intent.
• Model Analytical Paragraph Frame: Includes a PETAL paragraph scaffold with sentence starters and prompts, encouraging students to write clear, well-structured responses about how Shakespeare presents love.
• Challenge and Extension: students consider whether Shakespeare’s view of love remains relevant today — encouraging personal responses and critical thinking.