Introducing year 10 and 11 (14-15 years old) to French poetry.
For their last lesson before half-term break, I decided to introduce year 10 and 11 (14-15 years old) to French poetry with a short poem about autumn Chanson d'automne from Verlaine.
I used a Presentation on slideshare on http://www.slideshare.net/Raissa_ro/chanson-dautomne and changed it a bit.
- First I talked about Verlaine and students had to put parts of his life into order from when he was born to his death.
- Then I introduced the students to symbolism. Verlaine along with Rimbaud, Baudelaire and other poets were associated with the symbolist movement, a rupture from the romantics. I put some key words linked to symbolism and romanticism on http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/246256/symbolism_in_poetry and asked the students to highlight the words related to symbolism.
- I wrote words from the poem Chanson d'automne on small post-it notes that I stuck on the wall in different places in the classroom. Students had to go around the class, find them, copy them correctly and then write what they meant in English. They loved this simple activity which gave a bit of a twist to the usual "look up in the dictionary"!
- Finally I read the poem to them and we discussed it in English.
- The last activity was to write a poem about autumn which included the words "Bonjour...., au revoir....". So for example some students wrote :
"Bonjour l'automne, au revoir l'été.
Bonjour le vent, au revoir le soleil.
Bonjour l'obscurité, au revoir la lumière....."
This is a good way of making students write a poem in another language without being too complicated for them.
up for next time
* read the poem at the start of the session also