Identity, Culture & Belonging: Checking Out Me History, The Emigrée & Kamikaze

This focused revision session explores how poets present identity, heritage, culture, and belonging in the AQA Power and Conflict Poetry Anthology for AQA English Literature GCSE Paper 2. Through Checking Out Me History, The Emigrée, and Kamikaze, students will examine how personal history, cultural experience, memory, exile, conflict, and the pressure to conform shape perspective in these poems, while building the comparative confidence and clarity needed for successful exam answers.

This session can be booked as a standalone class, but it is also one of five sessions in the full Easter poetry revision course. Across the full course, students will study the eight most flexible poems in the anthology in great depth, building a secure and adaptable core of knowledge that can be used confidently in the exam. The remaining seven poems will also be covered with a lighter touch, focusing on their main themes and key quotations, so that students are equipped to make a comparison with any of the 15 poems in the anthology that AQA may choose for the named poem on exam day this June.

This makes the session especially valuable for students who want a clearer and more strategic understanding of how the anthology works as a whole. Themes of identity, culture, and belonging often lead to some of the most thoughtful and flexible comparisons in the exam, but they can also feel more abstract than themes such as war or power. Many students have relevant ideas about these poems, but are less certain about how to organise those ideas into a clear, comparative argument. This session is designed to provide a clear, markscheme-led approach, helping students understand how these poems connect and how to use those links effectively under exam conditions.

It is particularly useful for students who want to move up the mark scheme levels but are not sure what is required. Students may understand the surface meaning of the poems, but still struggle to explain the significance of voice, perspective, context, and method in a way that earns higher marks. This session offers examiner-led advice on comparison, quotation choice, analysing methods, and shaping a stronger written response, so that students can see more clearly what separates a straightforward answer from one that is more developed, perceptive, and precise.

There will be a particular focus on what the mark scheme actually rewards: comparisons that genuinely illuminate the poems, references that are selected and used with purpose, and analysis that goes beyond simple paraphrase or feature-spotting. Students will be shown how to write about big ideas such as identity and belonging in a way that remains sharply focused on the question and securely linked to the assessment objectives. For those who need a more confident framework for discussing these richer conceptual themes, or who want clearer guidance on how to write more analytically, this session offers practical and highly relevant support.

A companion workbook will be available before the session so that students can prepare in advance and get the most from the teaching. The recording will be shared afterwards with all participants, allowing students to revisit the session as they continue revising in the run-up to the exam. Optional essay marking can also be added, giving students the opportunity to apply what they have learned and receive feedback on how to improve further.

Whether booked individually or as part of the full five-session course, this class offers structured, exam-focused preparation designed to help students approach the anthology with greater confidence, stronger comparison skills, and a much clearer understanding of what success looks like in AQA English Literature GCSE Paper 2.