Trees: an inexhaustible source of teaching material

Working on a theme is a challenge for me as a teacher. It is a challenge in that you can never exhaust a theme plus you need to produce material on different levels. Some themes will recur ad infinitum, which is daunting when you set out to work on one of them in the knowledge that you will need to revisit the theme again and again.

Trees are one of my favourite themes not least because personally I find them fascinating -- from the stunted ones with their bare branches hanging low to the evergreens with their thick foliage on display throughout the year, a standing provocation for the elements.

 What follows is simply a suggestion on how to approach such a multi-faceted theme. At an elementary level I prefer to start with some vocabulary work on the parts of the tree. One can find plenty of images by way of introduction to basic vocabulary. For instance the following image would serve the purpose quite well.

At an intermediate level, one might need to revise and enrich the vocabulary related to trees but also fire the imagination with one of the many beautiful poems written about trees.

Joyce Kilmer’s poem is a celebration of trees:

Trees

I think that I shall never see   

A poem lovely as a tree.   

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest   

Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;   

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;   

A tree that may in summer wear   

A nest of robins in her hair;   

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;   

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me,   

But only God can make a tree.

Personifying trees can have a more lasting impression on students.

 Trees, like animates, are associated with tradition and popular

 wisdom, and stories abound.

One might even find stories about individual trees such as the

 one of the American environmental activist Julia Lorraine Hill, 

who lived in a 55-metre 1,500-year-old redwood tree in California

 for 738 days between December 1997 and December 1999 to 

stop Pacific Lumber Company loggers from cutting it down.

Alternatively one could relate the story of the collapse of Sydney

 University’s jacaranda tree, which was “steeped in superstition.

 A popular myth asserted that undergraduates would fail their

 exams if they neglected to study before the tree's first bloom, 

typically in October or November.” 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-37819712

The possibilities are endless and there will be more talk of 

trees in the near future.