You will need: outdoor space, paper and pencil per group

Activity 

The outdoors provides plenty of sensory experiences which can be used as stimuli for poems.  Working in small groups takes the pressure off an individual and collaboration can achieve unexpected, creative and rich results.

Prepare pupils by saying that you are going to go out for a walk in the school grounds.  It doesn’t matter what the weather is – you could go on to create further poems based on experiences in different kinds of weather.

Indoors, establish what you would like pupils to begin to notice outdoors (nature, colours, weather…) and ask them  to focus on language that fits in with current or previous learning in Literacy (adjectives, adverbs, simile, metaphor, for example).

Encourage discussion during your walk.  Prompt pupils with questions (what can we see, hear, smell, feel, taste?) rather than statements.

Group Folding Poem Instructions

This activity is one described by Joseph Cornell in his book Sharing Nature with Children  (1998).  To find out more about Joseph Cornell and see more suggestions for outdoor sessions see

https://www.sharingnature.com/nature-activities.html