English Career Resources

Key Stage 3: The Naming of Parts

Reading

Henry Reed's 1942 poem 'Naming of Parts' explores the experience of compulsory military service from a new recruit's perspective as he does his basic training.

It shows the disjunction between the language of a specific process in an occupational context and the free poetic language of the recruit's imagination.

Start to explore this by inviting students to do paired readings of the poem, taking parts as shown in the PDF.