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April was poetry month and I was teaching my novices a unit on school, so I incorporated in my lessons Pierre Ruaud’s poem “Pour la rentrée”. How to use this authentic resource? Well, I would want my students to understand the meaning of the words and the playfulness of the poem. Culturally I know there is a great tradition in France of teaching students to recite poetry, so I decided to ask my students to do the same. And, I see the rhythm of a poem as an opportunity to work on pronunciation.

I have a novice low activity on pronunciation using names that I have shared on these pages before. I use it in the first few days of class. This activity, two units later, would build on that work now that the students have been speaking the language for longer.

Here is the poem. You can use this handout for your students.

And, here are the slides that I used in teaching this lesson.

The steps were simple. I read the students the poem in English while they looked at the French. I then read the poem in French and asked them to listen to the pronunciation. I asked them for their observations and then I gave them a brief lesson on pronunciation using words from the poem. Next, I asked students to practice using a video of a French student reciting the poem and then record themselves reciting the poem on Flipgrid. This technique can be used with any poem, of course!

I have a second example to share, to show you how to use the same technique with a different poem. Here are the slides and here is the handout.