‘The Relic’ – John Donne – A Level Poetry Bundle: Teaching PowerPoint, Revision Sheet and Teaching Pack
Everything you need to teach and revise John Donne’s ‘The Relic’, written by Andy Hurley, former Principal Examiner, HMI Inspector and Headteacher. The resources are built around the Assessment Objectives rather than a single specification, so they work for any A Level English Literature course. Please check the requirements of the specification you are teaching.
The bundle explores one of Donne’s most daring conceits: a gravedigger reopening a grave finds a skeleton still wearing a bracelet of bright hair. Donne imagines that bone carried to bishop and king as a holy relic of love. Students examine how Donne draws on the resurrection of the body and the Catholic belief in relics, a dangerous subject in Jacobean England for a poet of Catholic heritage. They also consider how the final stanza turns the lovers’ chaste, angelic love into a miracle. Activities are pitched from C grade to undergraduate standard.
What’s included
1. Teaching PowerPoint
Phase-coded slides built around the four-phase learning continuum: Connect, Activate, Demonstrate and Consolidate. There is no lesson framing, so you can sequence the material over one, two or three lessons to suit your timetable. The deck moves from context and pre-reading activities, through modelled close reading of the poem, to independent analysis, critical discussion and essay planning. Bridge slides mark natural pauses between phases. The deck is fully self-contained: every instruction, question, answer and piece of teacher guidance sits in the presenter notes, with suggested timings for each activity.
2. Student Revision Sheet
Seven sections: Overview, Form and Structure, Close Analysis, Key Themes, Context (AO3), Critical Perspectives (AO5), and Study Questions and Extension Activities. It finishes with a Quote Quilt, a one-page grid of key quotations with brief analysis, coded for voices, themes and contexts. Ideal for independent study, homework or exam revision.
3. Teaching Pack
A detailed planning document for teachers, offering a choice of activities in each of the four phases. Each activity comes with prompt questions, areas to steer discussion towards, timings and extensions. It covers:
Starters: what would survive you, the practice of reopening graves, what a relic does, and reading the stanza shape.
Close reading: modelled annotation of the opening stanza, mis-devotion and risk in stanza two, the innocent love of stanza three, and the poem’s most loaded image, the seals.
Independent work: a stanza-by-stanza flowchart, a creative and visual response, and an investigation of what Donne places at the centre of each stanza.
Consolidation: annotation challenges, linking theme to close analysis, a debate on expressions of love, and an essay planning framework.
The pack also includes a 12-question Google Forms quiz with teacher and student versions and suggested answers. It rises from C grade recall to undergraduate evaluation, and a complete paper alternative is included. Five student handouts cover annotation, essay planning, creative and visual response, comparative analysis and research. You’ll also find alternative activities, including a reader response comparison, the gravedigger’s version and a paired reading with another Donne poem, plus cross-curricular connections and essay challenges. The pack closes with a critical contexts section on the textual, religious and biographical background, critical perspectives and further reading, and a breakdown of how the activities align with AO1 to AO5.
Who it’s for
This bundle is for teachers planning a first teaching of the poem and for departments building a shared scheme. It also suits students revising on their own.
A free seminar on this poem is available on the A Level AHEAD YouTube channel and works well as pre-teaching or revision alongside this bundle.
