This memory aid covers 🧠 Memory Aid — The CLAIM Arc within Checking Out Me History (Agard) for GCSE English Literature. Revise Checking Out Me History (Agard) in Power and Conflict Poetry for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 16 of 19 in this topic. Use it for quick recall, then test yourself straight afterwards so the memory aid becomes usable in an answer.
🧠 Memory Aid — The CLAIM Arc
Remember Agard’s argument through CLAIM:
- C — Curriculum imposed: “Dem tell me” — Dick Whittington, 1066, nursery rhymes
- L — Lost figures erased: Toussaint, Nanny, Seacole — absent from what they were taught
- A — Argument in italics: the celebratory stanzas have a different shape, a different voice
- I — Identity in Creole: the dialect IS the resistance — form and content are the same act
- M — “Me own history”: the defiant conclusion — “I carving out me identity”
Each letter follows the poem’s trajectory: imposed curriculum — erased heroes — structural argument — dialect as form — defiant assertion. Cover all five and you have a Level 5+ response.
Practice questions for Checking Out Me History (Agard)
In 'Checking Out Me History', Agard writes 'Dem tell me' rather than 'They told me'. What does this choice of language represent?
How does Agard use the poem's alternating structure to challenge colonial education? [2 marks]