The Scottish Poetry library commissioned Secondary teacher Rosie Bircham to produce teaching resources for Scots poetry.

Available here, the resources introduce learners to Scots and feature activities related to the following poems:

The Twa Corbies

Grey Feather by Kathleen Jamie

The Wild Geese by Violet Jacob

Fessen in the Vernacular by Lesley Benzie

Hame Fae Skweel by Lesley Benzie

The End by Mary Symon

The ‘junior’ resource is aimed roughly at learners working within CfE level 3 and the ‘senior’ resource is aimed at roughly at learners working within CfE level 4 – although both resources can be differentiated easily.

Related links

• There is a Mary Symon activity for Primary school learners at the National Library of Scotland’s Wee Windaes site, which also has a section dedicated to the writer.
• You can listen to Norlan’ Wind (The Wild Geese), set to music and popularized by Jim Reid, here.
• You can listen to Ayreheart’s version of The Twa Corbies on YouTube.

More resources for teaching Scots poetry

• www.scotslanguage.com/learning has online interactive resources on the following poems:
  • Holy Willie’s Prayer and Tam O’Shanter (Burns)
  • Shetlan (Peterson)
  • Bairnsang (Lochhead)

• The Kist anthology features poems that will be familiar to may teachers, such as A Dug, A Dug (Keys); Crocodile (Annand); The Bubblyjock (MacDiarmid) and Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket (Hamilton). All feature audio and related activities.

• Dictionaries of the Scots Language commissioned a series of poems to be written to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of A.J (Jack) Aitken, who was a significant contributor to DOST. Poems by Sheena Blackhall, Liz Lochhead, Alison Miller, Gregor Steele and Rab Wilson can be found here.

• Scots Hoose have resources for Scots poetry for learners in primary and secondary schools, including a Tam O’Shanter comic and a reading of Janet Paisley’s Sharleen: Ah’m Shy.

• ASL have Teaching Notes on Burns poetry as well as Liz Niven’s poem Tourists at Auschwitz, with the latter Teaching Note featuring the text of the poem itself, on the Teaching Notes part of their website.

If you’re looking for poems and songs for wee yins, the Scottish Book Trust has a Bookbug song and rhyme library.