Robert Frost - The Sound of Trees

Designed to accompany the Robert Frost poetry anthology for CIE AS English, but will be appropriate for any senior study of the poem The Sound of Trees.
The lesson first encourages students to describe the sound of the wind in the trees through an aural starter activity. Students then consider the typical connotations of this sound, and familiarise themselves with typical poetic ways of writing about the sound.
The main part of the lesson then asks students to identify the speaker and situation, as well as to find words that have negative connotations, and gives key vocabulary that will be useful when analysing the poem. Students then annotate the poem for technique using this vocabulary and then evaluate the metaphorical message of the poem. As a plenary, students demonstrate their knowledge of the poem and the techniques used by Frost within it by completing a targeted, scaffolded essay paragraph about the metaphorical message of the poem. Students finally link in their learning to relevant contextual details and other poems by Frost, as well as a song by Joni Mitchell on a similar theme to encourage wider contextual awareness.
Blank and annotated copies of the poem are also supplied in this pack.