Words in Context
“Light Brigade”
Week of: April 11-14
Monday: Choose two words from the passage on the backside of this sheet that are both challenging
and add interest. Highlight these words in the passage then create a student-friendly definition for each
word or a synonym from your background knowledge of the words you chose.
1. Word:
Your definition:
2.
Word:
Your definition:
3. Based on the information in the article, where did the poet get his inspiration for this poem?
a. A friend who died in the war.
b. A news story published in the Times.
c. A passion the poet had for history.
d. A story that was passed down to him.
Teacher Reveal Tuesday: Did your words match ours? If your Monday words match our Tuesday words
Congratulations! For those of you who have not matched us completely, in the spaces provided write
our “teacher-pick” words on the line and create student- friendly definitions or synonym from your
background knowledge.
4.
Word:
Your definition:
5.
Word:
Your definition:
6. What is significant about the way Tennyson wrote the poem?
a. He wrote a rough draft of the poem before the final draft and publishing it.
b. He heard the poem from someone else.
c. He sang the poem before writing it.
d. He wrote the poem under a pseudonym to avoid attention.
7. A satire is “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity
or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” This poem was
intended to be a satire. What evidence from the article supports this?
a. “Once enormously popular and much-memorised, this week's poem, Alfred Tennyson's The
Charge of the Light Brigade, is certainly the kind of poem people love or hate for anything-butliterary reasons.”
b. “ But this is also poetry in the ancient costume of the ballad, re-tailored for new times by the
Romantic poets a little earlier.”
c. “Back in his study he swiftly transcribed it, then sent it to the London Examiner, where it was
published a week later, on 9 December 1854.”
d. “To its admirers, the poem's a tribute to the Light Brigade's selfless courage: to its attackers, it's
the sentimental glorification of war and empire. Written in response to a Times editorial, in
which the author referred to "a hideous blunder" in the conduct of the battle…”
Wednesday: Using the “teacher-pick” words create an original sentence using the new word correctly.
Your sentence must include enough information to understand what the new word means.
8.
9.
10. In the article the author writes, “The subject is an emotive one, centred on the timelessly appealing
stereotype of heroic ordinary soldier versus incompetent high command.” Which of the following
scenarios would most be similar to the above mentioned comparison?
a. The driver’s instructor who ran a red light and was ticketed by the police officer waiting around
corner.
b. The unmotivated office worker who never has their work completed on time, shows up to work
at 9:45am versus his/her workaholic boss who shows up to work promptly by 7:30am with
color-coded file folders, holding all the week’s information based on urgency.
c. The intelligent, hard-working secretary who is very responsible. He/She gets to work on-time,
with coffee, calendar open, and his/her computer is already on and is responding to emails
when his/her boss comes into work 45 minutes later asking for his/her password for log-in,
where the his/her first meeting is, what time his/her flight is on Wednesday, where lunch was
ordered on Friday, how to open a Word Document, where an Excel file is saved. When the
secretary asked if he/she knew how to work the electronic calendar the boss replied, no.
d. The martial art student who is beat by his sensei.
Charge of the Light Brigade
Once enormously popular and much-memorised, this week's poem, Alfred
Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, is certainly the kind of poem people love
or hate for anything-but-literary reasons. The subject is an emotive one, centred on
the timelessly appealing stereotype of heroic ordinary soldier versus incompetent
high command. Tennyson's poem is not, of course, a fantasy: it's a largely accurate
account of an actual, and very dreadful, historical event which took place during the
Battle of Balaclava. To its admirers, the poem's a tribute to the Light Brigade's
selfless courage: to its attackers, it's the sentimental glorification of war and
empire.
Written in response to a Times editorial, in which the author referred to "a hideous
blunder" in the conduct of the battle, The Charge of the Light Brigade may signal a
new journalistic genre of poetry, where, if the news can't be got from poems, poets
can certainly get their poems from the news. But this is also poetry in the ancient
costume of the ballad, re-tailored for new times by the Romantic poets a little
earlier. The genre is an oral one, and it's significant that, before he wrote anything
down, Tennyson sang the poem aloud as he walked over the chalk ridge near his
home on the Isle of Wight. Back in his study he swiftly transcribed it, then sent it to
the London Examiner, where it was published a week later, on 9 December 1854.