Robert Frost - Birches

Designed to accompany the Robert Frost poetry anthology for CIE AS English, but will be appropriate for any senior study of the poem Birches, this lesson is divided into two halves.
This first lesson encourages students to consider why certain activities are considered “childish” through a picture starter. Students then watch a video of birch swinging and learn about Frost’s own childhood experiences as a “swinger of birches”.
The main part of the lesson then supplies a recording of Frost reading the poem, asks students to identify the speaker and situation and gives comprehension questions to secure their ability to analyse technique, based on key vocabulary suggested. As a plenary, students demonstrate their knowledge of the poem and these techniques by completing a targeted, scaffolded essay paragraph about technique, with an example given.
In the next lesson, students fully annotate their copies of the poems (both blank and scanned annotated copies are included in the download) and then demonstrate their learning through completing a paragraph on the metaphor of the activity of birch swinging. There is also some relevant critical analysis supplied at the end, and a re-cap of relevant contextual detail from the previous lesson.