Pupils read and listen to the traditional poem, The North Wind doth Blow.

In groups, they should choose robin, swallow, dormouse or honey bee, research how they survive the winter, and report back to class. Was the poem right?

KS2

Each pupil imagine heshe is a squirrel waking up after winter hibernation, and describe their first morning in the spring sunshine.

KS3

Ask pupils to decide who is talking in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost and what the narrator’s situation is. They could also study the structure and rhyme of the poem, and decide why it is special and appropriate.

KS4

In the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Duke Senior and his followers have “no enemy But winter and rough weather”. Students read Amiens’s song in Act III, and consider the effect of:

* the parallel between winter and man’s inhumanity

* the contrast between the serious verse and the light-hearted chorus.

Students could explore the significance of ‘the worst time of the year’ in TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi. Why is “the very dead of winter” important?