Book status: The book for this planning sequence is currently reprinting or out of print and therefore not in stock at most booksellers. If you do not already own the book, we would recommend this planning sequence as an alternative:
Alternative sequence
KS: Upper KS2
Year Group: Year 6
Literary Theme: Crossing Borders
Author(s): Maya Angelou
This is a 10 session Literary Leaf for Caged Bird by Maya Angelou in which children begin by identifying some of the poetic and figurative language before picking apart themes and inferring a narrative. They go onto to look at the poem I, Too by Langston Hughes and compare and contrast the language and the themes presented.
We chose these poems for a literary leaf as they are a pair of poems threaded together through a social and historical context, and yet there is relevance within both that could be discussed with the children to look at human rights and attitudes to race and women today.
Human rights, race, equality, feminism
