3.a. ENGLISH ACTIVITY: Nature in Poetry

Link with 2E The Age of the World, Thinkers and Theories

TIME NEEDED: 40 - 60 minutes

AGE: Year 6

LEARNING OUTCOMES Knowledge: Victorian Romanticism, Victorians love of natureSkills: Creative writing, poetry and music appreciation,a freeing activity

INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS:

The Victorians loved nature! They hunted for fossils, took geology trips to the Isle of Wight and the Alps, they visited natural spas, and collected plants for exotic gardens. They studied new ideas about how the world was formed, evolution and extinction. Art, music and poetry of the age reflected their love of nature.

John Keats painted by his friend Joseph Severen, 1845

Emerald Ant CIC engages school children in curriculum subjects using art and giant spectacle www.emeraldant.com/schools

• To appreciate the Victorians’ love of nature the class should read Keats’ poem ‘To Autumn’, link here. Alternative poems could be Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’, link here, and Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’, link here.

• Explain about Charles Lyell… He was a leading Victorian scientist whose theory about nature and geology influenced Charles Darwin and many others. He believed “The present is the key to the past”. Link here. Lyell’s theories of erosion and deposition can be linked with Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memoriam’: “The moanings of the homeless sea … sow the dust of continents to be”.

• The children should write a poem about a landscape they love whilst listening to Elgar’s Nimrod. They should include their thoughts on how the landscape was formed over millions of years, what once lived there and how it has changed. For inspiration they can listen to this or this. (Warning: This is a very beautiful but tear-jerking piece of music!)