SK Y4 Poem: At the Playground

Theme : Poetry

Focus : Listening and speaking

Unit : Anthology of Poems for Year 4,5, and 6

Topic : Playground

Content standard : 1.1 By the end of the 6-year primary schooling, pupils will be
able to pronounce words and speak confidently with the
correct stress, rhythm and intonation.

Learning standard : 1.1.3 Able to listen to and recite poems, tongue twisters and
sing songs, paying attention to pronunciation, rhythm and
intonation.
1.1.4 Able to talk about related topics with guidance.

Objectives : By the end of the lesson, children should be able to:

a) discuss the tone of the poem
b) recite the poem with appropriate intonation

Duration : 60 minutes

Activities : 1. Before reading: Tell the students the class is going

to
read a poem called At the playground by Brian
Moses.
Ask them to talk to a friend – what do they like to
do at
the playground? Who do they usually go to the
playground with? Get some answers from the
students.

2. Copy and cut out the pictures from p.3 and put them
on
the board (if you can’t copy, cover the poem with a
 piece of paper). Tell the students to look at the
pictures
from the poem.

Elicit the vocabulary from the students –

swing
slide
rings
What are the verbs that go with them? swung, slid,
hung
(don’t worry too much about past tense at this point)

3. Ask the students to say what they think will the poem
will
be about.
Teacher reads the poem to the students.
Were their guesses about the poem correct?
(Obviously
doesn’t have to be exact guesses)

4. Listening
Type the poem out and cut it into strips. Give a
set of
jumbled strips out to each group of 3. Tell them
that
you are going to read the poem again. They
need to
listen and put the poem in correct order (give
them a
few minutes to try themselves before you read it
again.)
When we went to the playground

I swung on the swings

I slid on the slide,

I hung on the rings.

 I raced over to Mum

for a kiss and a cuddle,

but as we were leaving,

I fell in a puddle!

5. Discussion
Q1: What is the poem about?
A: A girl is having fun at the playground with her
mother, but she wasn’t careful and fell in a puddle.

Q2: Who is telling the ‘story’? What is the tone of the

poem? Is it happy? Sad? Angry? How do you
know?
A: The tone is happy and excited until the last bit
when
the child falls. We know because she is playing in
the playground and she is happy to be with her
mum because she can kiss her and hug her. We
know the tone changes because of the word ‘but’
- it
introduces an opposite feeling – something bad
happens – she falls in a puddle and gets wet.

Q3: Students discuss with a partner: Has something

like
this ever happened to you when you were at the
playground or playing outside? Who were you
with?
What were you doing?

6. Speaking
Get the students to give the actions as they read the
poem (e.g an action for I swung in the swings etc.)
Students practice reciting the poem in different ways:
 Take turns e.g. boys say one line the girls say the
next,
one line quiet, one line loud, one half the class does
one
line, the other half the next.

Optional activity to get students to memorise the

poem
in a competitive, challenging way:

Disappearing text
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/drilling-2
(scroll down the page to see the instructions.
Basically,
you ask students to repeat the lines of the poem
filling in
words as you gradually delete all the words and until
they know the text. Finally, they recite the whole
poem
to each other and help each other when they miss a
word.
Later the students can recite the poem with actions
to
another class or maybe at an assembly.

When we went to the --------------

I swung on the swings

I slid on the slide,

I hung on the rings.

I raced over to -------

for a ---- and a cuddle,

but as we were leaving,

I ------ in a puddle!
Teaching aids : Poem lines cut into strips (enough copies for groups of 3 or
4),
enlarged pictures from the poem.