Writing an Autumn Poem- Leaf Style!

This writing activity is based upon encouraging the children to use the language they already have learnt and to create their own poems about Autumn
The poems need to sound like an"Autumn walk"
It's an activity that all stages of learners can do as it relies upon recall and use of language they already know.
All you need are six leaf shapes.


The children should work in groups of four or with more advanced learners in pairs.
No poem will be the same in the class! 

You will need: 
Each group needs six leaves- numbered 1- 6 .
Each leaf shape  has a number on it.
Each leaf shape has an instruction written on the reverse side.

Writing a poem game- leaf style!

• Spread out the six leaf shapes number side up
• Roll the dice!
• Select the leaf with the number on that is shown on the dice.
• Turn the leaf over and create the line of the poem, according to the instruction on the reverse of the leaf shape.
• Once the line is written, the leaf must be placed back on the table number side up and can be selected again if that number is the one that appears when the dice is rolled.
• Each team or pair's poem will have atleast six lines as each numbered leaf must be used atleast once.
• You could make this a time trial too - where the first pair or group to use up each of the numbered leaf shapes and completes their written poem are the winners.

What's on the reverse of the leaves as instructions?

Well there are prompts on the reverse of the leaves: 

1= nouns we know

2= adjectives we know

3 = a sequence of numbers we know

4= a sequence of colours we know

5 = instructions or commands we know

6 =an opinion word or phrase we know.

Let the children be creative.remind them that their poems need to sound like autumn walks- crisp, crunchy,snappy ,swirly etc

Can the children use their target language nowledge, repeat key words etc in the lines of their poems to create the atmospheric feeling of an Autumn walk

e.g.in its simplest form.................

Chien, chien , oiseau!

Grand,petit,gros! 

Trois, six, neuf

Noir,marron, orange!

Ecoutez! Regardez! Marchez!

Excellent, excellent,excellent!

A bit of performance and a bit of technology!

And of course if you know me well , then I would want to encourage the choldren to perform their poems and even record their poems as speaking leaves using an APP or a QR!

Autumn activities

Over the last two years and at this particular time of year, I have written blog posts to celebrate Autumn.I  have brought them altogether here to help those who want to teach a series of lessons based on Autumn.

Simple activities that all your staff can use to practise numbers , colours,simple language with an Autumn style theme, based around leaves, counting and the colour of leaves.

Practising basic language with an Autumn focus

Being creative with the theme of autumn from creating imaginary fantatsical fruits to creating our own German Eulen and reading a Spanish Autumn poem

A touch of Autumn creativity

Taking an Autumn walk, making 3D maps of parks and places in town

Taking an Autumn walk

Exploring a beautiful French poem with UKS2 - les feuilles mortes.

Les feuilles mortes

Writing ,and a review of this half term's language learning, using Autumn leaves to be gathered in amd shared out again at the start of next half term!

Writing and a review of progress in our writing

Autumn markets and simple language links with Maths.

Autumn markets

Using drama,poetry,music and performance to go on an autumn walk with a French poem

An Autumn poetry walk 

Looking for nouns, adjectives and verbs

Autumn word sorts and games 

Autumn descriptive sentences with a  noun, an adjective and the verb "to be"

Autumn sentence trees.Writing complex sentences (noun,verb, adjective, conjunction and intensifier)

Putting poetry in to French primary language learning

Today is a "clearing the decks" type of day and I have collated the blog posts I have written about using poetry in French primary language learning in to one blog post- mainly because a school recently asked me to recommend a poem and I had to scroll through my blog posts to find the one I wanted.Could be useful to others too though! (nearly all are based on authentic texts, but where i have added a poem we have created ourselves I have added an asterisk *) 

Practising a simple rhyme with actions: mon chapeau a quatre bosses

*Creating a very simple rhyme to remember numbers sunflower rhyme 1-10

School daily routine verbal phrases  A performance rhyme for daily routine

An authentic seaside song/rhyme  as part of unit of work on the seaside les petits poissons

Drama and cafe culture with UKS2 dejeuner du matin ,jacques prevert

* Making our own eye in the sky poems

Addressing 4 skills and grammar with an authentic children's poem Dame Tartine

Travelling the world in a poem Sept couleurs magiques

French "poem painting" of a Summer's Day

Writing about a day at the seaside using a poem as stimulus summer french authentic poem

*Hearing and identifying prepositions of place with a nonsense rhyme positioning rhyme

KS2 leavers' poems using a text in which we explore how colours make memories through a poem

School, memories and doodle poems based on Pierre Gamara's mon cartable 

Autumn percussion and performance poem based on French poem  les feuilles mortes

*Fireworks performance poem 

House,home,prepositions,performance all based on the personification of  la nuit

Possessive pronouns mon,ma ,mes , performance too with this poem in French mon chocolat

A twist of grammar to the familiar French poem/song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Aspects of Winter in a poem for UKS2 onwards  about icicles

Colourful creative poetry using les crayons as a stimulus text and scaffold.







 

Aspects of winter in French poems and flights of the imagination

It's getting cold outside and I am certain that when we come back to school after Christmas we will be talking with the children about wintry weather, wrapping up warm and maybe even building snowmen.

Today I found this poem on this web page www.mespetitsbonheurs.com and thought that this would make a great poem to use in UKS2 and Y7. 

Les glaçons

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

Elle n'a rien du tout !

Alors, c'est de la glace à quoi,

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

Corinne Albaut

• What attracted me to the poem was the idea of icicles hanging from the roof of a house and the questions it caused the poet to ask about what is ice ......
• I like the way the poet makes statements that ask questions but he/she doesn't give answers and suggests that the readers can make up their own answers.
• I like the way we can use the text to look at the negative form of the verb and there is potential to investigate the use of more descriptive verbs to replace "avoir"

Let's focus on colour,scent and taste of the icicles in the poem.
We will focus our imaginations on these three negative verbal sentences in the poem:

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

1. Read the poem with the children and locate the negative forms of the verb "elle n'a pas".Can they see the cognates and semi cognates used as nouns? (couleurs/odeur)? What do they think "goût" might mean? 
2. Now let's investigate ice.Using ice cubes is the poet correct? If we look closely can see any colour in them?Is there any scent to them? What do the ice cubes taste of? 
3. Now ask them to help you to create a magical Winter Wonderland scene( you can link this to Frozen the film for example, Narnia or the original story of the Snow Queen ).Ask the children to create magical icicles.......
4. Give out paper icicle shapes and ask the children working on their tables to write their ideas on their icicle shapes and create magical winter wonderland icicles

• icicles made up of magical colours,
• icicles containing magical scents  
• icicles with tastes and flavours. 

(You will need to remind children of how we linked scents and taste to work on ice cream flavours for example)

Now the children can recreate the poem and with your help can change the three negative statements which use avoir to positive statements e.g "elle n'a pas de couleur" becomes "elle a de couleur"

They can now add the information about their own magical icicles to make their magical winter wonderland poems following the writing template below:

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle a de couleur,
.............................................

Elle a de goût,
.............................................
Elle a d'odeur,
................................................

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

You now have your poems and your icicles for a magical Winter wonderland display or story book.

Flights of imagination with language learning

I really love to think out of the box and hope that some of the activities I create allow children tom explore the world of their imagination in another language and learning arena. It works for me because it helps me to allow learners to make the link that language is language and is a vehicle to explore the World! 

Over the last year I have posted the following blog posts  which demand that language learners explore their own imaginations through target language learning with a practical language learning purpose. Hope that the list below helps somebody out there to do something similar with their learners! 

• Just what is happening? A triarama with speaking and writing attitude
• Watch,look,think of descriptions and imagine the magic of Christmas based on a silent film clip  
• French poem about autumn from Maurice Careme using drama and grammar to create your own Autumn performance walk
• The power of books and creating interesting imaginative sentences
• Exploring physical and emotional descriptions of famous art using techniques from If a picture paints a thousand words
• Simple past tense and mood swing poems
• Investigating a French poem sept couleurs magiques
• Poems from our own imaginations on the seaside with an authentic poem stimulus the seaside
• Mystery and drama in the cafe based on video clip of famous "Dejeuner du matin
• Imagining and creating the simple text to fit the book title.What's behind the book title?
• Language learning and drama
• Conveying emotions through Art and drama with UKS2

La nuit .Unpacking and exploring a challenging poem with more advanced French language learners in KS2/ early KS3

This next half term with our Stage 3 or 4 language learners I wanted to find a poem that was sophisticated in message and familiar in context but that had sufficient challenge to move our more advanced language learners forwards.These young learners have a good understanding of present tense sentences made up of nouns, simple common verbs and adjectives.Most of the children can add adjectival  agreement relatively accurately and will be revisiting and practising prepositions in the context of house and home this half term

I found the appropriate challenge and context in this poem by Luce Guilbaud and what a fantastic poem too! 

La nuit

La nuit est entrée dans ma chambre

sur ses pieds de velours

elle s’est cachée derrière les rideaux

elle a cueilli des roses dans le vase

installée au fond du grand fauteuil

elle a lu tous les livres

elle s’est roulée sur le tapis

elle était si bien endormie

Quand la lumière a jailli

la nuit surprise a fui

elle a   escaladé la fenêtre

et disparu dans le jardin

derrière les sapins

Luce Guilbaud .Poèmes tout frais

La farandole. Scanédition

Why do I like this poem and why do I think that our learners care up to the challenge?

Well in ,my opinion because you can break this poem down in to component parts and because it evokes the feeling of night passing through a room like a cloak that moves from one side of the room to the other.Night comes in through the door and climbs put of the window and disappears in to the garden .The poem could act as a stimulus material to some wonderful poems in english where the children personify weather or times of the day etc.Plus on a more simple note there is the content of house ,home and prepositions in this poem and the ideas are sophisticated enough for 10,11 1,2 year olds!

Do I realise that the poem is written in the perfect tense - a past tense?

Yes but I want to challenge the children to look beyond the grammar and understand the pictures and images that are created.It's an opportunity to introduce and expose the children to the written form of the perfect tense but not to  focus on how the tense has been formed.

The activities below would form two lessons of language learning

Activities: the night's cloak

1. Discuss with the class in english the difference between light in the daytime and the darkness of night
2. Can they think of adjectives in english to describe the night? Give them thinking and pair talking time and take feedback
3. Share with the class the idea that the night is like a cloak that passes over the world and moves from one area to another and as it leaves the daylight arrives.Explain that this is just like being covered by a cloak
4. Ask the children to look up adjectives in a French/English bi-lingual dictionary that they think are powerful adjectives to describe the night
5. Take feedback and collect the adjectives on the whiteboard and ask the children to share the french and the english meaning so that all the class can understand the adjectives.Take a class vote on the top five adjectives by using a class tally chart and a show of hands.
6. Show the class the french word for night "la nuit" .Ask the children to tell you something important about this noun( we want the children to identify that this is a feminine singular noun because they can see "la" in front of the noun)
7.   Share with the class your cloak to represent the night ( A4 card folded to resemble a cloak). In the centre you can see "la nuit est ...." and around the cloak are written some adjectives spelt to agree with the feminine noun "la nuit"
8. Ask the children to help you complete the gaps next to the stars on the cloak with other favourite adjectives to describe the night- making sure they are spelt accurately to agree with the noun
9. Now let the children create their own cloaks of the night:

I think this would work best with black A4 card and chalks for a class french display.

Activities: movements and actions in the poem

1. Before you read the poem with the children you will need to unpack the poem so that all the children can successfully access and enjoy the poem.Explain to the class that they are first of all going to look at the ingredients and ideas that a french poet has put together to create a very evocative description of the night passing through a room in a house.
2. Ask the children to think of verbs that might describe the way the night might move in its mysterious dark cloak through the room .Listen to their ideas
3. Share with the children the movement cards that track the night as she moves through the room in the poem.Can they think of verbs in english that would explain the movements. I have selected  the following key past participles from the poem and drawn simple symbols to explain the movement.The blue arrows indicate the type of movement (entrée/cachée/installée/roulée/escaladé/disparu):

 4.Now give the children the key past participles as separate cards.You will see that I have highlighted in blue key clues in the words that will help the children associate the french past participle with a specific action.Can they match the words to the symbol cards above.

5.Ask the children to share their decisions with a second group to see if they have matched the same symbols with the key word cards, for example ......

6.Have the children been able to work out the meaning of all the movements? discuss woth teh children which ones were easy and which ones were more challenging and did they think that for example escaladé meant escaped? Ask the children to check the meanings in  bilingual dictionary by looking up the infinitive - you may need to write the infinitives on the whiteboard for the children.

7. Explain to the children that these actions have all taken place and the poet has recorded what has happened - so how would you say these actions in english if you wanted to explain the same idea? 

8.Now ask the children to find a space in the room - this would work best in the hall - and to become the night as she moves through the classroom. Can they stand in their space and mime carefully the night's actions as you call out the past participles from the poem.

Activities : investigating the poem

1. Give the children picture cards of the key objects in the poem.Explain to the children that they are entering a room in a house.Can they put the picture cards in order as they find them from the beginning to the end of the poem.Do any of the pictures belong outside of the room? (chambre/les rideaux/le vase/fauteuil/ les livres/le tapis/la fenêtre/le jardin/les sapins)
2. Now read through the poem with the children- explain first that there will be parts of the poem that they do not yet understand fully but that they are now on a mystery tour with the night through the room. 
3. As you come across the following phrases see if the children can help you to understand what the meaning of each statement is to build up an even better picture of the night and how it behaves.Remind the children that the night is acting like a person so they need to look for the nouns they can understand.Perhaps they will need to use the bilingual dictionary to find out the meaning of words they think could be important but don't understand plus  look for familiar clues in the unfamiliar words.

sur ses pieds de velours

cueilli des roses dans le vase

lu tous les livres

bien endormie

Activities: the key to the poem

1. Can the children help you to see what happens to the night when the daylight arrives? Give them the key to the poem: la lumière
2. Can they locate the word in the poem and see the change in the behaviour of the night after this word is mentioned?

Activities: la nuit - making the poem your own

1. You could use the hall space and read the poem for the children and let them act out the movement and behaviour of the night as it travels through the space of the hall.
2. You could create chalk drawings of the night as it passes across the paper as if it's passing through a room and then on white paper show how the night behaves once daylight arrives, using pencil sketches this time

Using drama and grammar to go on an Autumn walk through a French poem

L’automne

L’automne au coin du bois,

Joue de l’harmonica.

Quelle joie chez les feuilles !

Elles valsent au bras

Du vent qui les emporte.

On dit qu’elles sont mortes,

Mais personne n’y croit.

L’automne au coin du bois,

Joue de l’harmonica.

Maurice Carême

This beautiful poem I find is lyrical and there is a hidden thread within the words of the music of Autumn.It's a piece of poetry that we can use in target language learning to explore nouns and the imagery of dance and music to create a magical picture of  Autumn.  

Walk through the nouns

1. Share with the children the fact that you are on an Autumn walk and the wind is blowing and the leaves are blowing around.
2. Ask the children to read through the poem and find the nouns in the poem and write them down on a rough piece of paper (just like they were collecting Autumn leaves)
3. Which nouns in the target language have the children found? How did they do this? What helped them to find the nouns (e.g definite articles or words that looked very similar to english nouns)?
4. Are there any hidden nouns that we need to look ? Use the clues of "du" and "au" to find the hidden nouns.(With more advanced learners explain the use of "du" and "au" and how it has been formed and how it conceals the definite article).
5. Engage the children in an imaginary Autumn walk.Explain that you are going to say each of the nouns they have found in the target language and you want the children to close their eyes and listen to the sound of the words and see a visual image of the word and the object or item or scene it describes
6. Now ask them to create a visual image of their own of each noun- they need to stand up find a space and create a movement and a facial expression to portray the nouns as you say them. Ask the children to repeat this and say the nouns with you and give the nouns "life" like the poet does in the poem.

Step into the Poet's World

Read the poem with the children and ask the children to listen for the key nouns and  “step” into the poem through their physical reactions to the nouns.

• Talk with the children about the types of weather they expect in Autumn. Ask them to help you find the sounds in the text where they can hear the  wind as it blows through the wood?
• Focus now on the use of the noun “l’harmonica”. Discuss with the children the sort of the sound a harmonica makes. If possible access the sound of the harmonica. Can they hear the squeal and sound of the wind as it plays? What type of wind do you think is chasing the leaves in the poem? 
• Look at this key sentence in the poem: “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!”  Explore the magic of the image in this line..........

1. Ask the children in pairs or on their tables to investigate the language they can see in the sentence when they read the sentence. 
2. First they must locate the cognates, the nouns and verb.
3. Then they must look up the key language they are not certain about. 
4. Finally can they create a visual translation of the sentence- a picture, a cartoon or a physical performance? Give the children a time limit of 15 minutes to unpack the sentence, understand the sentence and to create their visual translation. Watch or view some of the visual translations and practise the spoken form of the sentence with the children each time volunteers share their work.

Adding music, dance and movement to the poet's world 

Read in French and then explain to the class the meaning of the sentence : On dit qu’elles sont mortes, Mais personne n’y croit”.Ask the children to help you find the magic that brings the leaves to life in the poem. Allow the children time to realise that the wind is music to the leaves.

Can the children explore the rhythm and the beat of the sentence “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!”  and create the "drum beat of the dancing leaves"?

  Share the world of the poet with others!

I selected this poem because of the magic of the wind and the music and dance themes that run through the poem. The poet wants us to understand that the wind is bringing what appear to be dead leaves to life. Can the children help you to create these visual images and bring the music and the dance to the poem? 

• As a class read the poem and look for repeated lines and words
• Read the poem and stress the repeated lines and words
• Look and listen for the rhyme
• Give all the children the music magic and suggest that they all have imaginary musical instruments. They must help you now to read the poem with stress and intonation that brings the music of the poem to life and add the drum beat of the sentence where the leaves come to life and dance “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!” .
• As a class now re-read and stress the repeated lines ,words and rhythm
• Ask for volunteers to perform the poem as a mime whilst the rest of the class create the music of the poem by reading it aloud with the stress, intonation and rhythm you have already explore.  

French percussion and poem performance les feuilles mortes

Using this simple , effective and beautiful poem about Autumn in French we can explore and interpret and perform linking languages to percussion music. This could be a poem to be explored by the children in UKS2 (with two or three years language learning) or possibly in KS3 Y7. 

1. Can the children identify for you the verbs in the text. Can they spot the repetition of the verbs?
2. How do they know that the poet is speaking (j'entends)
3. Can they identify the nouns in the poem and can they identify the noun which is repeated over and over again in the text . Is it singular or plural and how so they know? Maybe they are able to tell you whether the noun is masculine or feminine using detective work and looking at the spelling of the adjectives after the noun.
4. In each verse explore the descriptions of the leaves,looking up the final adjectives in each line where necessary ,using a bi-lingual dictionary.
5. Can they practise the nouns and adjectives for the leaves and descriptions as sound bites ( saying the description e.g les feuilles rousses/molles/d'or and making the sound of the words create a "sound bite picture of the leaves as they fall to the floor)
6. In each verse explore what the poet tells us he can hear- which words for seasons and weather can they identify in the individual sentences that start with "j'entends....".
7. Identify the pattern of each verse and the use of the verbs in each verse and the repetitive nature of the verb "tombent" and ask the children to suggest reasons why this might be the case (i.e perhaps to suggest leaves falling gently from the sky over and over again)
8. Identify the rhymes at the end of each sentence in each verse.
9. Write down in random order on the whiteboard the final words in each sentence.Can the children match up the rhyming pairs?
10. Ask the children to read the poem with you and to visualise what is happening and how Winter is drawing in.Ask them to describe to a talk partner what they have visualised. 
11. Give out the poem as cut up sentence strips . Can the children reconstruct the poem?
12. Can they now close their eyes and listen again to the poem and imagine Autumn moving toward Winter as they listen to the poem with their eyes closed?
13. Read and practise the poem out loud with the children.
14. Ask the children to suggest musical percussion instruments to portray the falling leaves and also to portray the weather or seasonal changes in each verse. Ask the children to work in groups with percussion instruments to create the sense and  rhythm and  to convey the description in one of the verses of the poem. they can select their favourite verse to match the percussion instrument they have been given on their table.
15. Ask the groups /tables to create a performance with spoken language , actions and music of their chosen verse. Ask them children to create the dynamics of the verse through the actions , music and the way they alter their voices (volume and stress etc)  
16. Listen to the groups performances of the verses.
17. Can the class decide which percussion performance matches the French poem description the best? 
18. Can the class read the poem with you and can four children representing the selected percussion performances create the different music effects for each of the verses as the class reads out the poem?

Power and dynamics of poetry in a target language

Last term I spent time considering ways to introduce and use poetry in language learning. It's an area that I have always enjoyed with young learners (and as an English and Drama  teacher in a former life) I am always delighted when children realise the power of poetry!

This academic year I am keen to focus on the "power of poetry " to bring words to life! Not just to look for images or to play matching and rhyming games but to engage the young learners with the power and sound scapes behind a poet's words.

Let's look for the dynamics of the poetry!
The  cadence, the pictures created by the sound- scapes ,the beat and rhythm of the syllables and the words chosen and the mysterious world that the poet has encapsulated in a confined use of language.

How do I think we can achieve this during a year of primary language learning...?

Well ...nursery rhymes and songs enable us to encourage young language learners to join in, participate, create actions, move around .... so let's look at poetry in KS2 in a similar way.

Build opportunities to explore poetry across KS2, where you engage the children with:

• listening for the beat, 
• the rhythm, 
• drawing the shape of the sounds they hear in the air or on white boards,
• creating actions that interpret the story of the poem or song,
• creating physical performances of the poems 
• taking an original text and making it up to date and modern e.g. generating a rap
• using APPS to add dynamics such as drumbeats and music to a class recording of thew spoken poem.

Let's consider what opportunities already exist in the work I know is being planned for within the network this Autumn term. 

We will be working with the children on Autumn poems in October  - based on the sounds and the smells and surprises of an Autumn walk.We will create Halloween poems and explore authentic poetry and songs about witches such as la sorciere grabouilla. Here's a You tube clip of the French song...  

In November we work on firework poems both  as reading and writing activities and we explore the shapes, sounds and colours of a firework display. In UKS2 some teachers will be generating wizard's potion poems after exploring a written simple potion to create a wizard. In December we will be getting ready for our Christmas activities and with KS2 children we might be preparing the poem and now song  le bonhomme de neige by Jacques Prévert.

Inspired ?

Well then why not get started in September with one of this back to school theme poem blog for both French and Spanish called Physical Pop Up Poems Daily Routine and Back to School,where you will find that I have suggested activities that will allow you to explore the dynamics of the poems hopefully to enable you to generate memorable learning occasions for the children and yourself!

You may also find some of my blogs on poetry from last year useful too. I have included opportunities for you children to explore the role of the poet and use limited language to great effect in creating their own poetry too! Hope the blogs,the ideas are useful and the possible transfer of activities to poetry in other languages is useful too!  

Spanish  KS1 rhyme based on the bear hunt Bear Hunt Rhyme
French, Spanish, German : The verb to have and a wizard's potion
French : simple Easter movie based on un petit lapin rhyme
All languages : Creating our own simple past tense mood swing poems
All languages : Using video clips  to generate poems Eye in the sky
 French and Spanish writing our own sandcastle poems to perform
French :using an authentic comptine to explore the skills of  listening,speaking,reading,writing , drama and phonics Dame tartine
French sept couleurs magiques
French painting a poem of a Summer's Day
French writing our own poems about the seaside based on authentic poetry
French emotions and doodle sense poems based on authentic poem mon cartable
French Drama and mystery in the cafe dejeuner du matin