Cold Mountains

Teaching Ideas

I would begin by playing the film without sound and stopping it at 53 seconds (before the humans appear)

Develop some rich description using powerful verbs and adjectives. 

Develop this through up levelling the vocabulary before creating similes and metaphors.

Share the poem with the students and allow them to read.

Discuss how the poet create mood and atmosphere through language picking out words such as chill, dreadful, haunting, etc

Discuss with the children 'who is speaking?'  Is it the mountain or is it the 'presence'  that creates the weather.

Create some personification poems based on other natural features such as: Mountains, rivers, deserts, lakes and icebergs.

Using the above as a stimulus for poetry (Thanks to @redgierob and http://www.literacyshed.com for the idea) the students will spend time just thinking about the mountain and complete the following short activities before writing their own poetry imagining themselves as the mountain.

Focus – Poetry/Descriptions  

Watch the opening to the Winter Olympic Games from the BBC (Literacyshed front page).

 During the first 53 seconds students are to write down any nouns they might include in their writing (recap on 4 types of nouns here – proper, abstract, common, collective). Mountains, icicles, snow, wind, rain, mist, clouds,

Now they have done that get the students to add an adjective circle around each noun

Following this get the students to add another layer to their noun – VERBS – action words.

What could the wind, rain, mountains etc be described as doing? This is called personification.

Next – if needed do an adverb circle too. This will add to the word bank that students will have available. An alternative to this would be to do an a-z race and have them up around the room as an aid to the students when they begin their writing.

All of this will then lead into the sentence foci which are shown below. Some are taken from Alan Peats exciting sentences books. Others just seem to be getting invented by the students!

Sentence focus

Simile beginning with a connective.

Despite being rugged, I can shine like the sun.

Although I am dangerous, many still try to climb to my head.

Adverb, noun, verb where

Silently, wind rushes through the deserted land around me.

Lazily, snow drifts around every crevice of my body.

Beginning – End

Dangerous – the frozen landscape that covers my upper body is extremely dangerous.

Incredible – the awe and wonder of this place is incredible to watch every day.

Finally, once all this is done I would expect some awesome personification poetry from the point of view of the mountain.  

Another poem:-

The Place of Dreams

Drifting across me, snow wildly tickles my jagged edges.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, clouds float past me delivering their goods.

Silently, I stand here. Millions of years old. No-one knows me.

Snowboarders, skiers, crazy stuntmen – they all terrorise me.

Wind howls throughout the day,

The sun beams brightly down but I never warm up.

Incredible – the land around me is just incredible!

Although I’m as tall as a skyscraper, I’m no man made monstrosity.

But beware – I am not to be messed with!

Lazily, rain trickles down every crevice I have making its way to the valley below.

I’m soon to be taken over by men, women and children,

because the Winter Olympics are on their way!