How to teach the writing of a poem about a tree 12-14 years

How to teach the writing of a poem about a tree
This resource provides details of a step by step guide for you to encourage your students to write a poem about a tree. It provides detailed guidance with options of the actual words you might use which I have found work well with this.
It is important that the initial notes from the prompts provided by the stages are written out in rough draft basic poetic form to make up the structure of the poem which can then be improved on.
A series of improved drafts are shown as an example to help inspire creative ideas.
Stages:
Stage 1.
Prepare the students’ minds for thinking about a tree by asking them to write down for one “a short time” anything that comes into their heads about trees. Say this: “Today we are going to have a go at writing a poem about a tree. But before we do I would like you to try an experiment. Write down anything that comes into your head about trees for a short time. I will then ask you to put down your pens and I will ask some of you to read out what you have written. It might be that you write how many trees you think there are in the world or you might write about different types, maybe trees you like, memories of trees, why they are important, or you might describe an imaginary tree. Anything you like. Ready, steady, go! Start writing please!”
(The reason you say ‘ a short time’ and not a specific number of minutes is because if they are all writing well, let it flow to your judgement of when to stop; if you say ‘three minutes’ you can be sure that one of them will time it and shout out ‘three minutes is up!’ thus removing control of the time from you).