Lesson Plans

One-off workshop: The Journey of the Magi

This lesson brings alive the uneasy narrative poem, Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot. Whether you read the whole poem to your students beforehand or not is your choice.
Adobe Stock/ JongJawi

Poem: Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

Painting (projected): Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo di Vinci

Music (optional): ‘Journey of the Magi’ on A Feast of Songs by Barry and Beth Hall: bit.ly/2Zyekbn

Explain that the students are camel drivers, leading reluctant camels on a bitterly cold journey. Ask them to travel, sometimes freezing, into a still image before continuing their journey. After a while, you call out ‘freeze’ and then read aloud lines 1-5 of the poem:

‘A cold coming we had of it …

The very dead of winter.’

Ask them to improvise in groups of three or four, as grumpy camel drivers in melting snow, trying to get a stubborn camel to stand up. Lead them into this with:

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