A plan is useful, but seeing a complete answer shows you what top-band analysis really looks like. Below is a short poem, printed in full because it is public domain, followed by a model response to the question 'how does the poet present the wind?', and then a note on why it works.
The poem
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
'Who Has Seen the Wind?' by Christina Rossetti
A Grade 9 model answer
Rossetti presents the wind as a mysterious, invisible power that we can never see directly, only know through its effects on the world. She opens each stanza with the rhetorical question 'Who has seen the wind?', and the honest answer, 'Neither I nor you', admits that this force is beyond human sight. By making the question the frame of the whole poem, Rossetti keeps the wind unknowable, something we sense rather than grasp.
Yet the wind is clearly powerful, because Rossetti shows it acting on nature through gentle personification. The leaves 'hang trembling' and the trees 'bow down their heads', as though bending in respect or fear before something greater than themselves. Giving the trees 'heads' that 'bow' makes nature seem alive and humble, and it lets us feel the wind's strength through the way everything responds to it. We do not see the wind, but we see its authority.
The poem's careful structure reinforces this. The two stanzas mirror each other almost exactly, repeating the question and the pattern, which gives the poem the steady, circling quality of the wind itself, always present, always passing. The small change from 'passing through' to 'passing by' suggests continuous, unstoppable movement. Through this quiet repetition, Rossetti presents the wind as a constant, gentle but irresistible force in the natural world.
Why it scores
This answer reaches the top band for clear reasons. It leads with a confident reading, the wind as an invisible but powerful force, and every paragraph develops that one argument rather than listing features. It uses short, well-chosen quotations and analyses the method behind each: the rhetorical questions, the personification of 'trembling' leaves and trees that 'bow', and the mirrored structure. It covers language and structure, hitting AO2 fully, and it always ties the technique back to the effect on the reader, which is what separates a Grade 9 from a Grade 6. Notice there is no context and no guessing about Rossetti's life, because none is needed here.
Try the same on a fresh poem using the practice questions, revisit the structure guide, and check what earns marks on the mark scheme page.