Teaching Yeats for Leaving Certificate: Meaning, Method and Modern Classrooms

This CPD session builds on an earlier workshop on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and focuses on fresh, classroom-ready approaches to teaching the poetry of W.B. Yeats at Leaving Certificate level.

The session will explore a range of poems - ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’, ‘September 1913’, ‘Easter 1916’ and ‘The Second Coming’ - tracing Yeats’s development as a poet while offering clear, accessible pathways into poems that students often find challenging.

Designed for teachers new to Yeats as well as those looking to refresh their practice, the workshop will balance:

• close reading and thematic clarity
• creative and active methodologies
• practical resources that support strong, exam-focused writing

Participants will leave with new ways to approach familiar poems, adaptable teaching ideas, and renewed confidence in supporting students as they move from initial understanding to insightful engagement with Yeats’s poetry.