Monday

1. Highlight any words you don’t know. Use a dictionary, look them up online or discuss them with an adult.
2. Write your own sentence for each of the new words you have learnt.
3. Illustrate the poem. Look at the noun phrases in the poem and try to include them in your illustration, e.g. a lusty trout, sweet forget-me-nots, skimming swallows.

Tuesday

1. Answer the questions below:

- What is the poem about?

- Who is speaking in the poem?

- List three animals that appear in the poem.

- List three plants that appear in the poem.

- What speed is the brook moving? What clues are there?

2.  Practise your handwriting by copying out several lines of the poem as neatly as you can using a joined style. Try to choose a good pen and ensure you are sitting correctly at a table to do this. Warm up by practising with these words:

Sailing, sweet, skimming, stars, sunbeams, sandy, shallows, flow, forever, chatter, river

Wednesday

1. Think about the journey that a river, stream or brook might take that is different to the one in the poem – there might be one near you that you could think about.

2.  Make a list of all the plants, creatures and landscapes it might see on its journey. Draw a picture of the journey, this might help you to picture it.

3. Add some verbs to describe the how the river or stream you have chosen might move, sound or look like.  Choose some words from the poem for inspiration to start you off:

· Move: weave, twist, meander, drift…

· Sound: trickle, babble, murmur…

· Look like: shimmer, sparkle, ripple

4. Find examples of the poet using adverbial phrases (telling you how, where or when) in ‘The Brook’.

5. Develop some descriptive adverbial phrases for your stream or river journey.

(I’ve added an adverbial word mat at the top of the page to help). For example:

· twisting through the city (where)

· murmur softly into the trees (how and where)

· after dark I shimmer under the glow of the moon (when and where)

Thursday

1. Write your own version of the poem in first person using your own river, stream or brook journey you have created.

2. Keep the first and last verses the same. Just change the verb ‘chatter’ on the first line to your own verb and where your water might be flowing to.

 For example:

1^st verse (the same as poem but with verb ‘chatter’ changed.

I babble, babble, as I flow

To join the rolling sea;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

Example of the start of the 2^nd verse I wrote myself….

I twist through the city Interrupting paths and roads,

And here and there riverside fisherman,

And here and his paddling retriever…

Friday

1.  Practise reading aloud your poem or the original.
2. Decide which words need volume and emphasis.

Remember our 6 performance ‘P’s :

• Pitch
• Power
• Pace
• Punctuation
• Pause
• Passion

Perform to a family member and/or record to send to me so that I can listen.

You may wish to publish (hand write, illustrate and decorate) your final poem,

Don’t forget to edit and proof-read!