La poésie

I'm cramming in a poetry unit in the last days of April, which is poetry month.  I taught my class about analyzing poetry, metaphors, onomatopoeia and making hypothesis.  One child exclaimed "Madame, stop.  Your big words are scaring me."  Fair enough, they are only 8 and 9 years old.

We read one poem, analyzed the structure, the rhyme and the repetition as well as the meaning of the poem.  (You're impressed, right? I mean these kids are only 8 and 9!)  When I say we, I mean I told them to count the number of times a word is written, what words rhymed and I explained what I thought the poem meant. 

Then I passed out some poems, gave them a few minutes and told them to do the same thing.  Cue the look of fear.  Except for one girl, she loves to talk, and was ready to give her opinion.

This is the poem:

Toc toc toc!                   

Toc toc toc!
Il pleut dur la terre.
Toc toc toc!
Il fait noir et clair.
Toc toc toc!
Tu bats des paupières.
Toc toc toc!
Tu fais des éclairs.
Toc toc toc!
Voici le tonnerre.

Here's some vocabulary for the anglophunny people.  (That is what one of the students called himself today, cracked me up!)

toc toc toc - doesn't mean anything.  It's just a sound.

Il pleut - rain

éclairs - lightening

tonnerre - thunder

Do you see the theme?

So she said that this poem represented the dark side of humanity and that it was really sad.  Uh, okay.  I guess it could be about all the pain in the world.  I just thought it was about rain.