Hello, my name is Ms. Grant.

I'm so glad you've decided to learn with me.

Today, we are in the unit Myths and Legends.

Today, we are going to look at a fantastic poem by William Carlos Williams. It was inspired by a painting called "The Hunters in the Snow" painted by Pieter Bruegel.

The first thing we need to do is get a copy of William Carlos Williams's poem.

You can find this in the 1991 "Collected Poems" from the years 1936 to '62.

It's volume two and it's published by New Directions.

Now I'd like you to pause the video and find William Carlos Williams's at "The Hunters in the Snow." Find that poem and then return and we can get going with our lesson.

Pause the video and get your copy of the poem now.

Welcome back.

Now you've got your copy of the poem.

We can get started with our lesson.

Let's get going.

So by the end of today's lesson, you are going to a written an ekphrastic poem inspired by Bruegel's "The Hunters in the Snow" and William Carlos Williams's poem of the same name.

So an ekphrastic poem is a poem that is inspired by a piece of artwork and describes it in great detail.

So we're gonna look at Bruegel's "The Hunters in the Snow." We're gonna look at William Carlos Williams's poem of the same name.

We're gonna see the relationship between the two of them, and then we're gonna use that as a jumping off point for our own writing of our own ekphrastic poem.

There are some key words today which are gonna be referenced throughout today's lesson.

They're gonna help us achieve our objective.

If you'd like to pause the video and take a note of any of these words, then please do so now.

I am going to select just one of these words, which is the word ekphrastic.

This is a poem which describes a piece of art and is inspired by it.

This is obviously our objective for today, to write an ekphrastic poem, but we're also going to read William Carlos Williams's ekphrastic poem as a bit of inspiration.

But the rest of these words are going to be referenced throughout today's lesson.

Pause the video if you'd like to take a note of them now.

Otherwise, we'll go through them during our work together.

Our lesson outline for today, we're gonna start off by exploring Williams's poem, "The Hunters in the Snow," and then we are going to write our own ekphrastic poem.

Let's start off by exploring Williams's poem.

So pupils discuss what they would include if they were to paint a picture depicting the season of winter.

So depicting it means to describe in words or to convey in a painting.

Now Sam says, "I would depict windows covered in frost," and Sofia says, "I would depict dejected figures in different woolly hats and gloves." So dejected, downcast, slightly depressed often winter can be very cold.

When you're outside, it can be quite an ordeal.

So Sofia would depict dejected figures in different woolly hats and gloves.

I'd like you to discuss, if you were to paint a picture depicting the season of winter, what would you include? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

A lovely discussion there.

I've got all these visions of all these different paintings of winter in front of me.

Some people wanting to focus really on the beauty of winter.

So the frost, the snow, the icy cold, people's breath when it gets really cold outside, all the different multicoloured jumpers that you can wear, the hats, maybe sledging if you're really lucky.

And others saying, I would depict some of the kind of harshness of winter.

So some of the animals or wildlife finding it really difficult, the natural world, like the trees, for example, not having any greenery on them.

So I'd would focus on the harshness of this season instead of its beauty.

Now here is a painting by Pieter Bruegel which depicts winter.

So it paints a picture of winter.

Here it is.

It was painted in 1565 and is part of a series of five paintings.

The other five paintings depict different times of the year.

The paintings are all all of rural scenes, which means countryside scenes and focus on different rural activities, so activities that you have to complete in the countryside.

So for example, you can, you know that the painting is called "The Hunters in the Snow" and we've got the hunters in the bottom left hand corner.

They've had to go out hunting to try and find food for the winter.

So the paintings were of rural scenes and focus on different rural activities.

I'd like you to discuss, what aspects of winter has Bruegel depicted in his painting? And I'd like you to examine the painting really slowly and carefully during your discussion.

So there's no rush here.

You can pause the video for as long as you'd like to really examine this picture and really enjoy this picture.

So what different aspects of winter has Bruegel depicted in this painting? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, really careful examination of this painting.

Lots of people starting in the background saying, "Well, I can see this sky." And then we've got the mountains in the background.

We've got these birds swooping overhead.

They seem to be above the lakes or bodies of water that are frozen and people are skating on.

We've talked about the hunters in the bottom left hand corner with their dogs.

And just behind them, we seem to have this fire that is being built up by a group of people in some sort of structure.

Some people even notice the sign, so suggesting maybe it's some kind of hotel or inn.

And the people outside are building up a fire to try and keep warm.

Now, there are some much smaller figures in this painting as well.

So there's a man on a bridge carrying a tree.

There are some other structures, maybe they are houses.

We've got some figures that we can see slightly more clearly in terms of their skating the ones that are closest to us in the foreground.

We've got those trees which don't seem to have any greenery on them.

So lots and lots of different aspects of winter being depicted in this painting.

If you want to pause the video again and have another look at this painting, there were some things that we just mentioned that you hadn't seen, then do go ahead.

This painting is really beautiful.

There's so much going on in this scene and it's worth reexamining.

Now the painting is called "The Hunters in the Snow," and Sofia says, "The hunters seem really dejected." So this is our key word.

They seem depressed, they seem downcast to Sofia.

I'd like you to discuss what might have led Sofia to this argument.

Examine the painting really slowly and carefully during your discussion.

Pause the video and discuss this question now.

Welcome back, a really nice discussion showing your careful examination of the painting, but also your understanding of this keyword dejected.

They seem downcast, they seem depressed.

Once we noticed, like Sofia, that the hunters are looking down at the snow at the ground, they don't seem very triumphant in terms of their return.

They seem as if they might be quite tired.

They can't hold their heads up.

And others noticed really nicely that the hunters don't seem to have bought much back with them.

They don't have animals that they are going to cook and eat.

It doesn't seem to have been a particularly successful hunt, and maybe that has led them to their dejection because they didn't feel that the hunt was very successful and they now don't have the food that they wanted to gather in order to survive this harsh season, this season of winter.

Others noticing the dogs.

The dogs seem quite dejected as well.

They are quite downcast.

There's not a lot of energy in that sort of area of the painting, so you definitely could argue that the hunters seem really dejected.

Now William Carlos Williams, born in 1883, died in 1963, saw Bruegel's painting and was inspired to write a poem about it.

Poems that are inspired by piece of art have a special name.

They're called ekphrastic poems. Ekphrastic poems are not just inspired by an artwork.

The poems also describe the artwork in detail.

So we're gonna read William Carlos Williams's poem, "The Hunters in the Snow." It was inspired by the painting that we've just been looking at.

And then of course in our second learning cycle, we are going to write our own ekphrastic poems. So Williams's poem is seven stanzas long, and each stanza depicts something different from the painting.

Discuss, what do you think Williams might have depicted in each stanza? So have a look at the poem.

What do you think particularly interested Williams? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, so really nice to return to this painting and start to think, well, what parts of the painting might have inspired Williams? We know that Williams chose the title.

It's the same as Bruegel's, so maybe the hunters are quite a big focus of this poem.

Maybe the dogs are also quite a big focus of this poem.

We know that the background, the landscape is very beautiful, very powerful evocation of winter with the sky and the mountain.

So maybe he focused on those.

Lots of people saying these birds swooping at the top.

They particularly interest me, so maybe they also interested Williams. Now here's the focus of each stanza of Williams's poem.

We've got the mountain, so it does start off in the background.

We've got the hunters, so that is the second focus, the largest figures in the painting.

The broken sign above the inn.

We discussed that slightly earlier.

The bonfire, which the people are circulating around.

And then he focuses on the women next to the bonfire.

The skaters on this frozen body of water.

And then the bush in the foreground.

And when I read William Carlos Williams's poem for the first time, I remember thinking I didn't actually really see this bush.

And it was nice for him to draw my attention to a further aspect, this moment of foreground in the painting.

Now I'd like you to discuss, how do you think Williams might have described them? So what adjectives might he have used? Might he have used a metaphor? What might he have used to describe each of these moments in the painting? Pause the video, discuss the question now.

Welcome back, what a lovely discussion.

Really flexing your creative muscles.

I can tell that when we come to write our own ekphrastic poems, you've got so many interesting pieces of vocabulary, so many different poetic techniques that you want to apply to your poems. Now I'd like you to discuss, what has Williams not included? So he does have seven stanzas, he does cover a lot of the painting, but he doesn't include everything.

What has he not included? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, so lots of people noting because there's so much going on in this picture, there are lots of things that he has included.

He hasn't focused on the sky, he hasn't focused on the birds, he hasn't focused on the trees.

He's focused on the largest figures and the figures around the bonfire.

But there are also other figures that he could have focused on.

He hasn't focused on the houses.

So even though he's captured so much of the painting, we can see the way that his eye has travelled.

There are moments in this painting that have not yet been captured.

And maybe those are the moments that are gonna inspire you for your own ekphrastic poem.

Now in his poem, Williams uses different adjectives to describe the mountains, the hunters, and the bonfire.

I'd like you to discuss, what adjectives would you use to describe each? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, some really interesting adjective choices there.

I heard some people using alliteration for the mountains.

So the mighty mountains, some people relying on that keyword for the hunters, the dejected hunters and other people focusing on the heat of the bonfires, the warming bonfire in comparison to the freezing scene which is depicted elsewhere.

Now, here are the adjectives that Williams uses.

He says the mountains are icy.

He describes the hunters as sturdy.

And he describes the bonfire as huge.

Discuss, which do you think is the most powerful and why? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, we've got a split here.

Some people saying icy, some people saying sturdy, some people saying huge.

It's really nice, these mountains described as icy.

It suggests that not only that the colour of them, that white colour in the background, but also that they are slippery, that they're scary, that they're treacherous.

This word sturdy, so these hunters, these figures, these largest figures giving an impression of their power.

And then this huge bonfire, this bonfire that people want to create to try and ward off the cold that is created by the rest of the scene.

So lots of different reasons why these adjectives are really, really powerful.

Now a check for understanding before we moved on to our first practise task, which is gonna explore the relationship between "The Hunters in the Snow" and Pieter Bruegel's painting of the same name.

Why is Williams's "The Hunters in the Snow" an ekphrastic poems? Is it A, it depicts winter, B, it depicts a rural scene, C, each stanza has a different focus, or D, it describes one of Bruegel's paintings.

Pause the video and select your response now.

Well done if you selected D.

It describes one of Bruegel's paintings.

So it doesn't matter what the artwork is.

If the poem or the piece of art is inspired, then we call, is inspired by that piece of artwork, then we call it an ekphrastic bit of writing and ekphrastic poem.

So it doesn't matter if it's a rural scene, if it's a winter or it's something entirely different.

If it describes a piece of artwork, then that means that is an example of ekphrasis.

So I would like you to read the whole of William Carlos Williams's poem "The Hunters in the Snow." I'd read it more than once so you really get a handle on each of his seven stanzas.

And the second thing I'd like you to do is complete the sentence starters using the prompts to support you.

So Williams's poem depicts Bruegel's painting because, Williams's poem depicts Bruegel's painting but, Williams's poem depicts Bruegel's painting so.

And there are some prompts there to help you consider how you would end your sentence starter.

So read William Carlos Williams's poem, "The Hunters in the Snow." Don't rush this aspect.

This is the most important aspect of this task where you are reading really carefully, enjoying the poem, engaging with the poem, connecting with the poem.

And then show off your understanding of this poem and its relationship with the painting by using those sentence starters and completing them using those prompts.

Pause the video and complete these tasks now.

Welcome back.

It was such a pleasure to hear people, see people reading William Carlos Williams' poem, "The Hunters in the Snow," being able to consider how it is truly inspired by Bruegel's painting of the same name.

We're gonna do some self-assessment just to check that the sentence starter are completed really accurately and carefully.

So I'd like you to self-assess your sentences using the questions to guide you.

So Williams's poem depicts Bruegel's painting because, our first self-assessment question is, have you mentioned specific moments in Williams's poem that connect to what is in the painting? So you need to make connections between these two pieces of art, the painting and the poem.

Have you done that in your first sentence starter? Pause the video and complete the self-assessment now.

All right, we're gonna move on to our second sentence.

Williams' poem depicts Bruegel's painting, but.

Have you examined the painting closely and identified some things Williams has not mentioned? For example, the birds.

So we discussed this earlier in the learning cycle.

Have you captured it in this sentence? Pause the video and complete the self-assessment now.

And our final piece of self-assessment, Williams's poem depicts Bruegel's painting, so.

Have you used the word ekphrastic and explained its meaning? Pause the video and complete this final self-assessment question now.

Welcome back.

Well done for showing off not just a great knowledge of William Carlos Williams's poem, not just a great knowledge of the painting itself and the relationship between them, but also this idea of ekphrastic poetry or ekphrastic writing.

We're gonna move on to learning cycle two.

Because we have such a great knowledge of what it means to write an ekphrastic poem, we are now ready to write our own.

That's gonna be the focus of our second learning cycle.

So each of Williams's seven stanzas depicts a different aspect of Bruegel's painting.

We know we've got the mountains, the hunters, the broken sign above the inn, the bonfire, the group of women, the skaters, and the bush in the foreground.

I'd like you to look carefully at Bruegel's "The Hunters in the Snow" and I'd like you to discuss, if you were gonna write an ekphrastic poem inspired by this painting, what four things would you depict? So we know that Williams had seven stanzas.

He focused on seven different things.

We're gonna focus on four.

So discuss, if you are gonna write an ekphrastic poem inspired by this painting, what four things would you depict? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back.

Really nice to hear what people are going to depict in their own poem.

Some alignment with Williams himself and some people wanting to focus on the mountains and the skaters and the hunters.

But others saying, there are some things that Williams has missed out that I think are really important that inspire me in the painting.

The birds, I'd really like to focus on, those trees, and some of the smaller figures more individually.

Now, Sofia wants to pick these four things.

The birds, the man carrying a tree, the branches of the trees, and this dog.

So just one dog in the pack.

I'd like you to discuss, what words and phrases could help her depict them? Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, some really lovely adjectives being used here and some other poetic techniques in order to describe these different moments that Sofia is going to focus on.

Now, this is how Sofia decided to depict them.

The elegant birds soaring, a lone man, bent double, skinny, frozen branches, and a dejected silver dog.

Now is there any way that you could help Sofia develop these ideas further? So she's got some really nice vocabulary here, some really nice ideas.

Could you help develop these ideas further so that when she comes out to write her poem, she can really rely on them.

Pause the video and discuss the question now.

Welcome back, some beautiful poetic techniques being employed.

Heard people write some full lines of this poem and writing poetry is all about planning and then writing and then editing and returning to it.

So these kind of discussion way of thinking, is this the best word that I want to use? How could I develop this idea? This is all really central to the idea of writing poetry because you want the absolute best words to convey and evoke the painting here that you are being inspired by.

Now, like Sofia, you have selected four things to focus on in the painting, and I'd like you now to discuss, how will you depict each? So just like Sofia made some notes, she had some vocabulary, how will you depict each of the things that you are going to focus on? I'd like you to make some short notes during this discussion task.

Pause the video and complete these tasks now.

Welcome back.

I'm looking at some lovely plans in front of me.

Each stanza with a clear central focus, and then some words or phrases that you're going to rely on in order to develop your stanza and your description of that particular focus.

Now, Sofia draughts her first stanza following three steps.

First, she writes the title, "The Hunters in the Snow." We're gonna use the same title that Williams uses.

She writes, referring to her notes.

So her first note was elegant bird soaring, and she's written elegant birds soar and fly, some perch on trees, delicate claws.

But then she rereads her work and she edits it.

So the stanza is good, there are some good ideas there.

But in her edit, she decides to write, elegant birds soar and glide.

So a really lovely verb choice there.

Some perch on trees.

Delicate claws on delicate branches.

So that repetition there of that beautiful adjective of the word delicate, it really helps to evoke the scene that she's trying to, or the aspect of the painting that she's trying to convey.

Now I'd like you to draught your first answer following the same three steps.

So first of all, write the title, then write, referring to your notes, and crucially reread and edit your first draught, just like Sofia has done.

Pause the video, draught your first answer following these three steps.

Pause the video and complete the task now.

Welcome back, beautiful to see those first answers in front of you with that title.

So we know we're starting our ekphrastic poem, but I'm also loving seeing the edits that you have made.

So you can see that first draught and then just see how you have lifted it just like Sofia did by making some edits.

So I'd like you to discuss, read your first answer aloud and discuss what do you think is the most powerful word or phrase and why? So this will really celebrate your work in that first stanza.

Pause the video and complete the tasks now.

Welcome back, lovely to hear you reading your first stanza aloud.

I often find that reading my work aloud really helps me to not only celebrate its successes, but also hear particularly the spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors that I would like to correct.

And I saw a few people using their pen to say, oh, I should have had a full stop here.

I should have had a comma there.

Oh, I'm not sure this is quite the right spelling of the adjective that I wanted to use.

So there was some really nice inundations there, but also a beautiful celebration of the powerful words and phrases that you have used.

And if you can identify the power from those words and phrases, you'll be able to mimic that in your next stanzas.

So I would like you now to write the next stanzas of your ekphrastic poem, "The Hunters in the Snow." You've got your first stanza there.

I'd like you to write three more stanzas each with a specific focus.

You decided what they would be earlier in this learning cycle.

You're gonna use Bruegel's painting to inspire you, but you could also rely on William Carlos Williams's poem, "The Hunters in the Snow." Give this writing task the time that it deserves.

Allow yourself to be creative, to try things out, and then edit them if needed.

Pause the video, complete this task now.

Welcome back.

What a pleasure to see these beautiful ekphrastic poems all around the room, all drawing attention to different moments in Bruegel's painting and clearly inspired not only by the painting, not only by William Carlos Williams' poem, but also the creative discussions that you've had throughout this lesson.

Let's do some self-assessment before we celebrate your poems. So I'd like you to look at Bruegel's painting while reading your ekphrastic poem aloud and match words and phrases in your poem to the picture showing how your poem is ekphrastic.

Pause the video, complete these two self-assessment tasks now.

Welcome back.

It was such a joy to hear all of those poems being read aloud.

I had some incredibly powerful descriptive phrases.

All of these poems were ekphrastic, clearly inspired by Pieter Bruegel's painting.

And also, as we discussed before, reading that work aloud just allows you to make any of those spelling, punctuation, and grammar edits that you might want to make.

It's very, very good skill to have, the idea of reading your work aloud after you have written it, not just in poetry, but in your paragraphs as well so you can complete editing.

Well done for writing such beautifully creative poems inspired by this painting.

In summary, William Carlos Williams' poem, "The Hunters in the Snow" is ekphrastic.

An ekphrastic poem is a poem which describes a piece of art and is inspired by it.

Each of Williams's seven stances refers to something in Pieter Bruegel's painting "The Hunters in the Snow." Bruegel's "The Hunters in the Snow" depicts a rural scene in winter.

It has been such a pleasure to explore the painting, the poem, and then see your creative work, and I look forward to seeing you next time.