French Poem writing about a day at the seaside

In my previous blog post  I shared with you how we can paint a picture of a Summers Day using an authentic poem. This is based on a poem abut a quiet Summer's Day . I also suggested that hopefully lots of children will have lively , loud, active Summer's Days perhaps by the seaside and that we could use the original poem about a quiet Summer's Day below to create our own alter-ego poems about a lively Summer's  day at the seaside.

So here we go!

L’été

Silence

silence

l’ été

se balance

où l’oiseau

se tait.

L’herbe

séchée

tremble

dans l’air

brûlé.

Silence

silence

l’ été

chante

dans

les blés.

(Anne Marie Chapouton)

Step One 
Revisit the poem that as a class you have analysed and used to paint a picture of a peaceful Summer's Day Ask the children to read the poem with you again and to perform the poem as described in the previous blog ...here is the activity again: 

Read the poem for the children again.

The class and yourself are now going to try and create a spoken picture of the poet's descriptions.

• Ask the children to help you put a backing track to the poem. All the children need to do is repeat over and over again in a whisper the first two lines of the poem "Silence,silence" like it was the breeze wafting through trees. 
• Read the poem for the class with the children's backing track (whispered quietly) accompanying you as you read aloud.
• Divide the class in to three. Each third of the class is responsible for the reading of one of the verses of the poem with you , whilst the rest of the class are the backing track.

Step Two 

Ask the class to help you to re-identify the key words in the text and remind yourselves of the pictures that have been painted by the words of the author.

Explain that the children are going to create the "alter-ego" poem to this original poem. Instead of a quiet Summer's day it's going to be a fun , lively ,loud day at the seaside

• Using bi-lingual dictionaries and working in pairs can the children come up with new verbs that they would like to use in their poem ..if the poem was about children playing at the beach on  a warm Summer's day/ the way the sea moves at the seaside/ the noise people make at the seaside  
• Ask each pair to share with a second pair the verbs they have found
• Ask the pairs as they share their verbs to give the English meaning too. 

Step Three 

Give each pair  a version of the table  below.

On the left is the original poem

on the right is the skeleton of their Summer's day at the beach poem.

Can the children working with a partner or in larger groups generate a poem picture of the day at the beach.

Ask them to add verbs to describe :

• what the  children are doing in the first verse
• how the sea moves/behaves in the second verse
• the sound/noise of Summer  at the beach

The children should use the template on the write of the chart to create their own three verse/sentences to describe a day at the beach.

Practise writing the correct verb forms(using verbs they have suggested) with the children so that they feel comfortable with third person singular and plural form of the present tense. You may want to create a temporary post it working wall so children can go to the wall locate the verb they want to use and if necessary take t back to their tables so they can refer to it .

L’été Silence silence l’ été se balance où l’oiseau se tait. L’herbe séchée tremble dans l’air brûlé. Silence silence l’ été chante dans les blés. (Anne Marie Chapouton)

L’ été Bruit bruit l’ été se reveille où les enfants …………………….. La mer bleue ………………… sur le sable d'or Bruit Bruit l’ été ……………………. au bord de  la mer.

Step Four 

Now the children can write up their new poems and either perform them for the class or create a picture background to their own  handwritten poems  about a Summer's day at the beach .

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French Poem Painting of a Summer's Day

I have been looking for a beautiful Summer poem in French for a few weeks  and have decided upon this poem below as the starting point from which to create a picture depiction of the poem, a text in which to identify nouns, adjectives and verbs and a platform from which to build an "alter-ego" children's version of a poem about Summer. You can see how I use this poem below and the activities to then support children to create their own Summer's day at the seaside poems.

The work hinges upon the fact that Summer for adults- especially teachers - is a time for peace and quiet but for children let's hope it's a time when they can get outside, run around and go to the seaside!

Here is the original poem,which paints a picture of a calm Summer's day in the countryside.
Here is a picture to set the scene for the children before you read the poem with them.

Here are the initial steps to understand the original poem and in my next blog I will explain how you can then use this poem as a platform to create your noisy day at the beach poem.

L’été

Silence

silence

l’ été

se balance

où l’oiseau

se tait.

L’herbe

séchée

tremble

dans l’air

brûlé.

Silence

silence

l’ été

chante

dans

les blés.

(Anne Marie Chapouton)

Step by step we can take the poem above and create our own Summer's day poem  painting .Here is how it works!

Step One

Explain to the children that this is a poem about a quiet peaceful Summer's Day .

Can they spot the cognates in the text of the poem that tell us this?(silence)

Read the poem for the children and ask them just to enjoy the sound of a peaceful Summer's Day in French with you .

Step Two 

Tell the children that in the text  five nouns are mentioned (Summer,bird,grass,air and wheat). Can they use their "language detective" skills to identify these nouns?Ask the children what we might expect to see written before a noun in French to represent the word "the" and explain this may be the first easiest way in this poem to locate the nouns in this text. Ask them to find the nouns and work out their meaning by a process of elimination:

• nouns we already know
• nouns that look like English words
• which nouns that are left in our list of five nouns
• any nouns we need t look up in a bi-lingual dictionary?

Step Three

Can we paint our Summer's Day ?

Give each child the text and coloured pencils. 

Agree on colours for the five nouns. Colours that the children associate with the nouns (perhaps yellow for Summer/brown for a bird/ pale green for the grass/blue for the air and golden orange for the fields)

Ask the children to highlight the nouns in the correct colours .

Step Four

Let's zoom in:on adjectives 

First let's zoom in on adjectives in the second verse!

Can the children tell you what type of word helps us to learn more about a noun and adds description (adjectives)?

Ask the class to identify and  then look up the adjectives in the second verse of the text using bi-lingual dictionaries Are any of the adjectives challenging to understand ?Can they find them if they look for the verbs the adjectives originate from ?Remind them that this is a poem and therefore we need to remember the poet is using adjectives creatively to paint a picture.

Take feedback about the  descriptions of the nouns the children think the poet is creating with the use of adjectives.

Step Five

Let's zoom in:on verbs

Have the children noticed that the poem is made up of three sentences? Each sentence is a verse of the poem and paints a picture of an aspect of a quiet peaceful Summer's Day.Now let's look for the verbs in these sentences .Either reveal or write each verse as a long sentence.Can the children find the words they now know in each sentence. Can the identify the verbs. 

• First verse/sentence In Year 5 and Year 6 we may have looked at daily routine reflexive verbs - so can the children use this knowledge to identify two reflexive verbs in the first verse/sentence? Use  prior knowledge (e.g taisez vous!) and cognates (e.g balance) to try to work out what the poet's first verse/sentence is telling us. 
• Second verse/sentence can the class spot the verb. How easy is it to understand his verb "tremble" and why? What picture is the poet painting in the second verse/sentence?
• Third verse/sentence can the children spot the verb and can they use prior knowledge to understand the verb (e.g chantez!). Again what is the picture the poet is painting with the use of words in this sentence?

Step Six 

Read the poem for the children again.

The class and yourself are now going to try and create a spoken picture of the poet's descriptions.

• Ask the children to help you put a backing track to the poem. All the children need to do is repeat over and over again in a whisper the first two lines of the poem "Silence,silence" like it was the breeze wafting through trees. 
• Read the poem for the class with the children's backing track (whispered quietly) accompanying you as you read aloud.
• Divide the class in to three. Each third of the class is responsible for the reading of one of the verses of the poem with you , whilst the rest of the class are the backing track.

 Step Seven 

Give each child one of the sentences from the poem and ask them to create a coloured drawing of their sentence, depicting in their opinion the picture the poet's words describe.

With the finished pictures create a display of the poem - each child's picture is a component of one of three "snapshots" of either verse one/two or three.

Add the text to each of the "snapshots" of your "quiet Summer's Day" 

Poster Power Poems Tour de France

We can create a class performance poem that shares the flavour and the events of the Tour de France.

(As my Spanish and German teaching  colleagues point out there is no reason why this should not be an international focus as some many cyclists  participate from across French , Spanish, German and English speaking countries).

First select your poster . For the Tour de France I love the posters from the Crayonfire website of the 

Tour de France

I have selected this evocative poster of the Tour de France from this website capturing the moment when the tour passes through Paris 

You need to look carefully at the poster you select and decide which themes you can identify in the poster that you have already practised with your pupils. The children must be able to create full sentences - noun, verb, adjective or adverb -to describe what they see and feel in the poster.

In the poster above our Year 5 and Year 6 children will be able to create sentences about the city , the weather, the cyclists' personalities and characteristics , the parts of the body and the cyclists as they race through the city.

Divide the poster into focus areas . Below you can see that I have been able to divide this poster in to four focus areas : weather / city and the famous buildings / cyclists / cyclists,parts of the body and the race.

Gathering the language for our Poster Power Poems Performances

1. Look carefully at the complete poster with your class and brainstorm the key target language they can think of to describe what they can see.
2. Record this for the class on a flip chart piece of paper which is laid out as four empty areas as in the poster above.Record the language the children think of in the correct area of the poster.
3. Working as differentiated ability groups allocate one focus area to each  group  in  the class. 
4. Ask each group to work as team to create a sequence of sentences - one per child in the group- to describe what they can see.Give the group a formula to work with:

NOUN/ VERB/ ADJECTIVE or ADVERB  

Creating our Poster Poem Performance Sentences

1. Working in the groups, ask the children to check that they have used the three components in their sentences (noun, verb, adjective or adverb)
2. Can they now order the sentences they have created so that they create a powerful description of their part of the picture.
3. Each child should select a sentence to which they need to add actions and voice (e.g. calm, fast , powerful, cheering, loud, mechanical,tired). You may at this point want to bring the class back together to explore this idea with a sample sentence from each group or a sentence that you have created.
4. Each group must now order their sentences in to a verse of the class  poem  

Poster Power Performances

1. Make sure all the children can see the original poster . Ask them in the syle of the poster to add rhythm and beat to their poem verses that they have created.Each child is responsible for adding this agreed rhythm and beat to his/her sentence.
2. Now your class can perform their poem together as one whole poem about the Tour de France.  

Bring our "Poster Power Poem" to life for a grand finale! 

1. Record each group's poem and performance.
2. Play the performances to the class in a sequence agreed and organised by the class.