A taste of great literature.Drama and mystery in the café!
Drama in the café!
Poetry with Jacques Prévert
Although my example is in French, once you have found your poem in Spanish or German etc then the activities will be equally useful.This poem though is just so evocative and thought provoking by
Jacques Prévert. We are working with the first verse only of this poem.This is because the poem's content beyond the first verse is too mature for the children . We want to zoom in too on the first verse and look at the simple caf
é
language and how it evokes a mystery.
In the new DfE KS2 POS we are encouraged to read “great literature” with our KS2 pupils ,so here is a way to do so with UKS2 as we consider café culture in Summer second half term.
.
Déjeuner du matin
(Jacques Prévert)
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
At the end of KS2 we explore “café culture” with our Year 6 language learners. This poem by the French poet
Jacques Prévert will enable us to explore “great literature”on several levels.
Some of you may say but it’s in the past tense ! I don’t think this is an issue here as the messages are clear and the children will be able to understand the text once we have investigated the language.
Recently I wrote a blog post about ways to begin to
using “ il y avait”,asking the children to become factual observers of what takes place in the café as they watch the World go by.The ideas below are about observationbrought to life!
Déjeuner du matin ,
Let’s first put it into context for young language learners.
Café culture
Find some pictures of French cafés
through the ages- both photos and paintings
.
- Askthe children to look at the people, to think about what the people might besaying to each other
- Ask the children to explore what the people may be thinking.
- Ask them to jot down on papertheir thoughts as they discuss this in groups of four.
Whispering galleries
- Askthe children to make a whispering gallery ofthe utterances and thoughts they have come up with in the activity above (probably at thisstage of learning ranging from greetings, feelings, selecting food and drink ,opinions about the food,/people and clothes , comments about the weather ,third person singular simple descriptions etc)
- Bring children to the front ofthe classroom and ask them to bring their whispering galleries to life in frontof the pictures.
Sound scene
Now bring your classroom to life as a café.
- Ask the groupsto sit at tables and to perform their whispering galleries again. This time youwill direct from the front.
- Just like singing in the round you will indicatewhen a table should start talking and when they should stop – so sometimes youwill have one table talking and sometimes you will have all the tables talkingetc.
- You will also control the volume by raising you arm to indicatelouder and lowering your arm to indicate when thetables need to be quieter or whisper.
- Finish the activity, by one by onestopping each table and their whispering gallery,until only one table isspeaking.
- Explain to the children that they have just created the “Sound Scene”of a café.
An Observation
- Discuss with the children the key objects we may find in acafé.
- Discuss this in English and elicit from thechildren the key nouns you will need to bringthe poem by Prévert to life.
- As the children offer the key words such as cup,spoon, saucer, table ,plate , knife, coffee, tea, glass , milk , sugar – set atable with the items at the front of the classroom and as you do so name theitems in French.
- Give the children picture cards to represent the items usedin the poem –coffee, cup, spoon, milk, sugar.
- Now you have discussed the keylanguage with the children ask them to listen to the poem and lift the correctitems as they hear them said.
- Repeat this a second time and ask the children totry and anticipate the order of the items- pausing before each item to give thechildren time to secede which picture card to show you.
Here is a reading on You Tube of the poem.I would suggest that you stop the clip after the first verse.The words are on the screen so you can see when to stop the clip.(The second verse continues on to talk bout lighting a cigarette etc). You may like to show the clip up to the end of the first verse now the children understand some of the key nouns in the text.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MalR-e4IgAs?wmode=opaque]
A physical performance
Now hand out this part of the poem , cut up into sentencestrips . One set between two children. The cards should be in a random order.
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait.
Can the childrenreconstruct the lines of the poem?
Share with thechildren the whole first verse of the poem and add actions for “il a mis”/il a tourney/ il a bu.
Can the childrenhelp you to understand what physically happens in the poem? Read through andask the class to help you act out the poem?
A silent movie
But what is thecustomer really doing, thinking and feeling?
Ask the childrenin pairs to read the poem themselves again and in English discuss what the“back story” is to the customer.
Why is he there? What has happened? What willhappen?
Can they create a silent movie of the action in thecorrect order that has emotion and physicality to portray what they think theback story is to the action?
Putting life in to our poetry performances
Using voice recorders and filming the action each pair can now createtheir own short filmed sequence of the first verse of the poem?