Nature Poetry
.jpg)
Many famous poets have written poems about the theme of nature, from William Wordsworth to Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney. Poems with the theme of nature include a wide array of moods and tones that provide creative perspectives, including the purity and honesty of nature and the destruction mother nature and humankind can cause.
Exploring poems about the natural world from different times and places presents our students with many opportunities to develop their appreciation and love for the artistry of using words to create images of the beauty of mother nature. The topic offers a rich canvas of possibilities for considering humans' impact on the environment and increasing our students' awareness of the importance of protecting the natural environment globally.
Inquiry
Key Concept: Creativity
Related Concepts: Theme, style
Global Context Exploration: Personal and cultural expression (artistry, craft, creation, beauty)
Statement of Inquiry: Creators express beauty and artistry using specific themes and styles.
Inquiry Questions:
Factual: What are some poetic devices and how do poets use them?
Conceptual: How do poets use theme and style creatively?
Subject Group Overview
Here is a list of some suggestions for poems about the natural world, animals and the environment. If you have taught poems you can recommend to us, please add them to the comments box below and we will add them to this list.
Below are Texts to Go and downloadable resources to share with your students:
The Natural World
Plants and places
Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney
Daffodils by William Wordsworth
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
Animals
Animal Study by Ellen Bryant Voigt
The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Tyger by William Blake
The Yellow Hammer´s Nest by John Clare
The Environment
Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County by Jay Parini
World by A.R.Ammons
The Seasons
Fall by Mary Oliver
On a Lane in Spring by John Clare
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
To Autumn by John Keats
Poems in Translation
Nature Aria by Yi Lei
Websites
Short Films
GRASPS Summative Assessment
Goal: To express the beauty and artistry of the genre of poetry using the themes of the natural world and some poetic techniques
Role: You are a young poet
Audience: Your audience is the readers of your poetic anthology. (You could choose a specific audience, e.g. younger readers or environmental activists)
Situation: You have been asked to write and create a collection of poems with the theme of nature and for each poem in the collection, write a short commentary.
Product: Poetry anthology with a commentary for each poem.
Success Criteria: Your poetry anthology will be assessed against Criterion C: Producing Text i. ii. iii. The commentaries will be assessed against Criterion A: Analysis i. ii. iii.
TIP! Share an InThinking student page for the summative assessment directly with your students:
Nature Poetry Unit - GRASPS Summative Assessment
Student Task Sheet to Download:
Grasps Summative Assessment
Communication Skills
Use appropriate forms of writing for different purposes and audiences
Thinking Skills
Create original works and ideas
Teaching Strategy: read and analyse a range of poems, discuss and practice using poetic techniques leading to students engaging with the creative process to write their original poems for a different audience
Action
Content
There are so many possibilities for choosing the content of this unit! I suggest starting with you choose a specific focus, then find out from the students if you don't know already what poetry they have already in previous MYP classes and if they have analysed poems before, which poetic devices they know and can recognise.
The next stage is to consider carefully exactly what it is you want your students to be able to know, understand and do by the end of the unit. I have found that backwards planning of the unit ensures the statement of inquiry is closely connected with the summative assessments and that they are a performance of understanding of the SOI.
With all the above thought out, you are ready to begin to plan the unit. I have chosen a selection of poems to recommend to you from my list of teaching favourites and provide you with some suggestions for other poems and resources. However, there are many other possible angles and poems you can choose and if you have any personal favourites you would recommend to us, please post them in the comments below this post!
You will engage in formative assessment of your students throughout the learning process in the unit. We constantly judge our students' knowledge and understanding during lessons and provide them with positive verbal feedback. I recommend always preparing students for each summative assessment, possibly by giving them a similar mini-formative assessment before the summative assessment, for which you provide verbal and/or written feedback goals that your students can work on.
Content
Choose appropriate poems to support or challenge individual student needs.
Process
Provide additional questions, explanations, scaffolds, vocabulary lists etc.
Product
Modify the final product in ways such as reducing word count, increasing time allocation, providing additional clarifications or modifying the assessment criteria and strands in Years 1-4.
If you choose to focus on environmental issues during this unit there is a clear link with the MYP Service Outcome: Engage with issues of global importance. Perhaps, your students could write their own poetry to raise environmental awareness, perform it for others or create short films in which their environmental issues poems are presented with appropriate visuals to create an impactful message for others.
Use some questions below to support your reflection at different stages of the unit. A detailed list of pre, during and post unit reflection questions is available on this page. Below are just a few questions to get you started.
Before the unit
• Why do we think that reading, listening to and analysing poetry with themes of the natural world, animals and protecting the environment will be interesting?
• What have students encountered in reading and appreciating poetry before?
• What do we know about students’ preferences and patterns of interaction?
During the unit
• What resources are proving useful, and what other resources do we need?
• What student inquiries are emerging?
• What skills need more practice? eg. poetic analysis skills
• How can we scaffold learning for students who need more guidance?
• What is happening in the world right now with which we could connect teaching and learning in
this unit?
Following the unit
• What were the learning outcomes of this unit?
• How well did the summative assessment task serve to distinguish levels of achievement?
• Was the task sufficiently complex to allow students to reach the highest levels?
• What evidence of learning can I identify?
• Which teaching strategies were effective? Why?
• How will I build on our experience to plan the next unit?
• How effectively did I differentiate learning in this unit?
• What can students carry forward from this unit to the next year/level of study?