After the lessons we did recently on Apollinaire's shape poems - "calligrammes "- I set my lovely Year 9 class the homework of coming up with their own poems - a re-working of Apollinaire's poem Automne (which some of them managed very well) or making a calligram of their choice.Here are a few of the results on my classroom wall. We used two lessons, we read the Automne poem and analysed it, then discussed how they could adapt it easily to another theme and then we went on to look at more Apollinaire calligammes, particularly the Eiffel Tower shaped poem, which is a rallying cry against the
Nazi invasion of Paris.
One pupil changed it into a celebration of Paris as the capital of l'amour!
Their homework was to come up with a new poem and/or a calligramme.
Results were mixed the following week, so I set the classroom out in groups and they took their work and compared it with each others' offerings and decided on improvements - AfL boxed ticked!!
Katie G did a wonderful figure of Michael Jackson and turned it into a tribute to the singer.
You can see the ideas she included here. Not all of her classmates agreed with her choice but her tribute is obviously heart-felt.
Many other pupils loved the sun shape as it lends itself to short phrases and circular repeating images. Flowers were popular also, with a few very imaginative landscapes. Quality of French improved from one week to the next and pupils happily put their work up in my room. This class has only one lesson of French per week , as the other one is German - the only way we can get them enough exposure to a couple of languages in no extra time. So WELL DONE 9a1!!
