With Valentine’s Day fast approaching and Burn’s night recently passed, many teachers rather cleverly merge the two by choosing Robert Burn’s poem, A Red Red Rose as a focus for a lesson. Rabbie Burns, like many poets and writers took inspiration from the world around him to help his creative juices flow. It’s often easier to write when you can see, hear, smell, feel and taste – allowing your senses to become alive in a way that rarely happens inside.

Many years ago, at Inverallochy School there was a whole school celebration of Word Play in the school grounds. Each class had to devise a literacy activity suitable for groups which comprised children from all classes. One class decided to create a Red Rose Hunt. The idea was that the older children could support the younger ones. Thanks to Fallon the teacher and her class who came up with this lovely idea.

The children created maps of the school grounds. They then decided where each part of the poem was to be. The locations of each part of the poem were indicated with a red dot on the map.  Next, the class typed up the poem into eight parts and laminated them. These were hung around the school grounds along with a red rose to indicate their presence.

The activity was a huge success and provided lots of different skills both in the creation of the hunt and the undertaking of it. You can decide how you wish the activity to be recorded. For example, it could be that children have to write or photograph the sections of the poem as they find them and then sort them out into the correct order back in class.  Also, I like that it saves teachers having to create a trail in their own time which often takes far too long.

• If you prefer to avoid laminating card and paper, then have a look at these many alternatives to laminating.
• Other good trails that are worth considering include poetry trails and a Harry Potter Hunt.

This blog post was originally published in February 2016.