Discussion and Activities

Students take turns reading the poem aloud.
Discuss the poem's rhythm.
Students look up the word "attire" if they don't know what it means. What is the attiring and the disattiring of the trees?
Why does Williams describe the moon as liquid?
How do the trees prepare their buds for winter?
What makes the the trees wise?
Identify any use of simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification and idiom in this poem.
Identify the poetic style used in this poem.
Write a paragraph in your own words describing a scene in your memory that is similar to the scene Williams describes in his poem.

Winter Trees

by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

P.A.S.S.

Grade 4: Reading - 1.2a,4b; 2.1; 3.1b,2d; 4.1b,3ab. Writing - 2.5a
Grade 5: Reading - 1.1b,2ab,4b; 2.1; 3.4d; 4.1b,3abd. Writing - 2.1,7a
Grade 6: Reading - 1.1ab,3ab; 2.1; 3.4d; 4.1a,3acd. Writing - 2.4b,6a,7
Grade 7: Reading - 1.1,3c; 2.1; 3.1c; 4.3ac. Writing - 2.1c,4c.6a,8
Grade 8: Reading - 1.1,3c; 2.1; 4.3a. Writing - 2.1a,5c,7a,8

Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom is a program of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, 4-H Youth Development, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom

Ag in Poetry