Autumn unseen poetry activities
Mark the season in style with this wonderful autumn-themed unseen poetry lesson for KS3 students, exploring John Clare's engaging and accessible poem 'Pleasant Sounds'.
You'll find a range of student-friendly, scaffolded lesson activities - from first responses to poetic terms bingo - to help students to explore and understand this unseen poem.
With a PEE task, a collaborative writing or group presentation task, and a 'write your own autumn-inspired poem' task, this complete lesson worksheet will help you to celebrate the seasonal and sensory delights of this time of the year with your class.
An example activity from the lesson worksheet:
Task 5: Pair/group presentation
Prepare and plan out a presentation on the following question about the poem:
In ‘Pleasant Sounds’, how does the poet present ideas about autumn?
You can express your creativity and understanding of the poem in one of the following ways:
A. A group presentation
B. A piece of collaborative writing
You can use your notes from the previous activities to help support your work here.
B. Collaborative writing
- In response to the question and the poem, your group should plan out 3-4 main points of your paragraph with evidence and explanation or analysis.
- Include a short introduction and conclusion.
- Each group member takes a point and writes this sentence of the response.
- When complete, exchange your section with another group member to give feedback for any improvements.
- Redraft and then pull all of the sections together to create a complete response.
- Share with another group or the class.
Collaborative writing feedback:
As a class, you can use this set of criteria to assess each piece of writing:
- *Did the paragraph answer the main question about the poem?
- *Was there evidence included from the poem to support ideas?
- *Did the paragraph explore meaning behind the poet’s use of language?
- *In your opinion, did the paragraph have a proper introduction and conclusion?
- *What mark would you give it out of 10? Why? Explain your reasoning.