For teachers
Teaching Sheers and Heaney
Everything here supports the Eduqas Component 1 pairing of Heaney’s Field Work and Sheers’s Skirrid Hill for Section B, post-1900 poetry. The scheme, lessons and assessment guidance are built from the way the pairing is actually taught, and point back to the student pages so learners can revise what you cover.
A term of paired poems
Thirteen weeks, a Heaney and a Sheers poem each week, built around a rotating essay theme and timed writing.
LessonsLesson by lesson
Key questions, activities and written outcomes for the taught poems in both collections.
AssessmentMarking the comparison
The AO split, the examiner report in practical terms, common pitfalls, and the comment-only marking routine.
The unit at a glance
Section B is a single comparative essay worth 60 marks, marked across all five assessment objectives, with AO2 double-weighted. Candidates answer one of two questions on the pairing and analyse at least two poems from each collection. It is open book, with clean copies of both texts. The whole paper is two hours, so this section takes about an hour.
Why there is a marking desk here
Unlike the coursework sites in this family, Field Work and Skirrid Hill are examined, so students may use an AI feedback tool without breaching coursework integrity rules. The marking desk is comment-only: it is blocked, at prompt level and again server-side, from giving any mark, grade, level or score. It supports your marking policy rather than replacing your judgement. See the assessment page for the suggested routine.
Student pages you can set
- Field Work and Skirrid Hill: collection guides, three movements and the cloven-hill metaphor.
- Themes and Comparing: the bridges and the two-way paragraph.
- Context and Quotations: AO3 and AO5, with critics ready to embed.
- Exam skills and the practice paper: method, annotated model, timed questions.