Lesson video

Hello, it's Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to our English unit.

In this lesson today, we're going to be exploring and responding to some of John Lyons' poetry.

I am so excited to share some of the poems from Dancing in the Rain with you all.

I hope you're ready.

Let's get started.

In this lesson, you'll need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil to write with, and some coloured pencils or coloured felt tips if you have them.

If you don't have any of those items with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In this lesson, we're going to start with looking at Dancing in the Rain by John Lyons, which is his book of poems. We're then going to focus on two of the poems in particular Granny's Sugarcake and then Tell Me Mama, and finally we'll end with your independent task.

So Dancing in the Rain by John Lyons, this is a collection of poems for younger readers.

It's written and illustrated by John Lyons.

So some of the poems have illustrations that go with them.

And also the illustration that you can see on the front cover is also created by John Lyons.

Because as we know from our previous lesson, he's a very passionate poet, but also a very passionate painter.

And he's hard works of art exhibited in the past.

It was shortlisted for the 2016 Centre For Literacy in Primary Poetry Awards.

So it's been quite a successful book.

And it draws on inspiration from Lyons's childhood in Trinidad and Tobago, which we learned about in our last lesson, and the traditions of carnival and calypso.

Here is a quote from Peepal Tress press, which is the publishing company that published Dancing in the Rain to describe it a little a bit more.

"A breath of Caribbean fresh air, "these poems are humorous, beautifully crafted.

"and perfectly pitched to their audience, "though readers of any age will enjoy "his painterly use of language.

"Lyons conjures up vivid images, situations, and emotions, "which appeal both their universality and their newness, "as he examines and comments upon the world around him "with wit and empathy." Here's another quote about Dancing in the Rain from Grace Nicholls, where she says, "With a lightness of touch "and in a language both lyrical and charming, "John Lyons captures the sounds, taste, "and general magic of his Caribbean childhood." "This is a strange, strange story I have to tell," says Lyons, "and how well he tells it." Hopefully those quotes have got you excited for exploring some of the poems in more detail.

So as I mentioned, in our first lesson, where we learned about John Lyons, he is from Trinidad and Tobago, which you can see on the map, there's two islands that are in the Caribbean.

And in Trinidad and Tobago, they speak lots of different languages, and one of the languages is Patois or Creole.

And that's the local dialects of Trinidad and Tobago.

So some of his poems that he writes, there will be some words in there that might be a bit unfamiliar, some of them sound a lot like English that you might be more familiar with, and some of them you might not know at all.

And that's what made poetry so exciting, is looking at the language and trying to work out the meaning.

And then it's absolutely fine if you don't know what something means.

And this language has been influenced by English, French, and African languages.

So it's a bit of a mixture of lots of different languages together.

So the first poem we're going to look at today, I'm very excited, is Granny's Sugarcake.

And you can see here, here is the photograph from the book.

And you can see this is one of the poems that John Lyons has illustrated, which brings the poem to life even more, and gives you a bit of an idea about what this poem is about.

So, rather than me reading it, we are now going to listen to John Lyons reading his poem.

So we're going to watch a video of John Lyons reading this poem from CLPE.

As a youngster, I love one of my favourite pastries is sugarcake.

My grandmother used to make it and one of the things I've really, really enjoyed was eating the bits when you grate the coconut, you get the tiny bits if you carry on grating you will hurt your fingers.

So that was put aside, when it was put aside of course, I snapped it up and ate it.

And I loved it so much.

I was always keen to have a sugarcake.

So this poem is called Granny's Sugarcake "Sugarcake! Sugarcake! Ah, chile sweetie ting a Trini granny could mek She grate de coconut, put sugar in ah hot pot.

When it bubble-up like crazy she stir in de coconut; Den she drop in some clove, ah piece of cinnamon, ah few drops ah vanilla.

She screwin up she face, keepin she yeye pon it.

She stirrin it, she stirrin it, an she whole body shakin-up; ah tellin yuh, meh Granny got riddum.

Wen de sugarcake ready, she spoon it out on greaseproof paper, an is den meh mout begin to water, but de look meh Granny gimmeh tell meh ah got to wait fuh it to cool down good.

Sugarcake! Sugarcake! How ah love de sugarcake meh Granny does mek." So before we start to analyse this poem in more detail and think about the language and the structure, I just want you to respond to this poem yourself with how you felt about it.

So we need to think about these four questions.

What did you like about the poem? What did you dislike about the poem? Do you have any questions? And what did it remind you of? It might remind you of something else that you've read, or it might be something that you've experienced in your own life.

Me personally, I really like the poem because it was something that I could really relate to.

I remember when I was a child, that I used to stand watching my mum cook cakes and wanting to lick the spoon.

So that was something that was quite similar.

Something that you've ever disliked, or something you might have questions about is some of the language is a little bit unfamiliar.

Or maybe you really like that.

I do really like analysing poems so that I can understand the language that might be something that you like about the poem.

I want you to pause the recording now, and either have a think about these four questions or write yourself some notes.

Pause the recording now.

So now we've had a chance to respond and think about how we feel about the poem.

We're now going to think about the structure.

So we're going to think about the versus if there's any rhyme, any repetition, and the punctuation that you notice.

So hopefully, you can see the whole poem on the screen in front of you.

Now, verses are a little bit like paragraphs, They are the way a poet splits up their poems. So hopefully, you can see those very easily.

Rhyme is when words sound the same, often they have the same ending sounds.

Or are there any words that rhyme in that poem? Often poets use rhyme at the end of each of their lines.

Maybe there is rhyme maybe there isn't.

And just because there isn't rhythm doesn't mean it's not a poem.

Is there any repetition? Are there any words or phrases that you use more than once? And then you can think about why that might be.

Are there any punctuation, maybe notice where there might be commas where there's maybe full stops.

I think there might have been some exclamation marks and some colons and semi colons in this poem as well.

So see you having go through, have a look and see if you can identify those.

Pause the recording now.

Okay, hopefully, you've had a little think about those different aspects of structure.

So in terms of the verses, let's count the verses, how many are there? There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 verses in this poem, and they vary in length.

Some of the verses are only three lines long, and some of them are seven lines long.

So the poet has decided to break up this poem unevenly, not all the verses are the same length.

In terms of rhyme, I don't think there really is very much rhyme in this poem.

There's a little bit of a kind of heart rhyme.

Where he says, "An she whole body shakin-up." And then it says, "Meh granny got riddum." There's a little bit of rhyme there, but more of a half rhyme than a proper rhyme.

So not a huge amount of rhyme.

Maybe you could say that rhyme is where he rhymes, he says sugarcake and make, you could say those are rhymed together.

And that maybe his pronunciation means that those words don't actually rhyme.

In terms of repetition.

He repeats sugarcake a few times.

Now I really like how it starts and ends with sugarcake! sugarcake! with that exclamation mark, which makes me think that he's almost like, he's shouting at his grandma, he's desperate to have some sugarcake.

And then there's also a few other bits of rhyme where it talks about she's stirrin up, she's stirring up.

Now I can imagine he's repeating that because she's stirring again and again.

So the language almost reflects what his grandma is actually doing.

And then in terms of punctuation, we can see he's almost got full sentences in his poem.

So some of the lines end with a comma, and then maybe the next line will end with a full stop.

So you can almost break his poem up into sentences, or sometimes those sentences are split with a colon or a semi colon.

So the punctuation is quite interesting.

And like I mentioned, he's got that exclamation at the end of sugarcake, which I imagine is him shouting it at his grandma in desperation to try some.

But you might have had some other notes as well.

Now we're going to think about the language and the meaning of the poem.

And I want to teach you a really key word that we often talk about when we are analysing poems, and that is the word theme.

Repeat after me, theme.

Theme And theme is a noun.

The definition is the subject, topic, or main idea of a piece of art or literature.

So a poem might have a theme, a story might have a theme, a film might have a theme, a painting might have a theme.

So it's the main idea of that piece of art or literature.

Synonyms could be subject, topic, or idea.

And in a sentence, you could use it like this, you can say, nature was the main theme of the poetry collection.

So often nature is a very common theme that poets like to write about.

Okay, so now we're going to think about the language and the meaning of this poem, Granny's Sugarcake.

So I want you to think about these three questions.

What is the poem about? Could you summarise it? So those two questions are linked together.

And then I want you to think about what are the themes? Are there any main ideas that run through this poem? Pause the recording and have a go now.

Okay, so hopefully, you have worked out what the poem is about.

And John Lyons very helpfully explains it, he introduces it in his film of him reading his poem.

So it's all about him enjoying when his grandma used to make this sugarcake when he was younger.

And he particularly liked getting those little bits of coconuts and eating them while his grandma sorry, was cooking it.

So that would be a short summary of what the poem is about.

In terms of the themes, I would say the main themes are maybe family because I know him and his grandmother are obviously related and they're part of the same family.

It's also to do with their relationship together and how they work with one another.

But you might have had some other ideas as well.

Okay, we're now going to look at some of the language in a little bit more detail.

So on the left hand side, I've copied out part of the poem.

And I've highlighted some words that might be a little bit unfamiliar, we might want to think about what they mean.

So some of these words, like I said before, are from that Patois, or that Creole, that's a local dialect from Trinidad and Tobago.

And a lot of them sound very similar to English words, but he's always written it phonetically as to how you would pronounce it.

So for example, words, like de coconut, we would say the coconut, but people from Trinidad and Tobago might pronounce it de.

So he's written it in that way.

The same with den she drop.

That would mean then but he's written it how someone from Trinidad and Tobago might pronounce it.

So that makes it really interesting.

And he also refers to a Trini granny.

I wonder if you can work out what a Trini granny might mean.

Yeah, that's it.

So it means a granny who's from Trinidad.

Exactly.

So a little bit you might talk about an English person or a French person.

This is a Trini granny.

And then there are three ingredients that his granny puts into this cake.

And these are all types of really delicious spices that often we put into baking.

We can put them into baking or we can put them into savoury things as well to add extra flavour.

And they are cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla.

You might be familiar with those if you've ever done some cooking before.

We're now going to look at the next part.

And we've got this beautiful illustration from John Lyons to add a little bit more detail to this section.

So again, we've got some phrases that might be a little bit unfamiliar.

So we've got the, "keeping she yeye pon it.

Now I think that means she's keeping her eye upon it.

She's keeps looking at her pots that she's stirring to check that it's okay, it's not bubbling over, it's not burning.

And she stirs and she stirs her pot.

And it says, "an she whole body shakin-up." So I think that means that as she's stirring it, her whole body is moving and she's shaking.

And it says, "meh granny got riddum." Which I think means that his granny has got rhythm.

So she's almost the way she's stirring the pot and shaking is that it's a bit like a sort of rhythmic dance that she's doing.

And then lastly, at the end, it talks about greaseproof paper.

And you can see in the picture you can see what looks like a piece of paper on the work surface which she's spooning the food onto.

And greaseproof paper isn't the paper that we write on, it's a paper that we might use to stop food sticking maybe on a baking tray, and often people use it when they're baking cakes and biscuits and things like that.

And then lastly, we've got John Lyons's reaction to how how desperate he's feeling to eat that sugarcake that his granny has produced.

So it talks about, "meh mout begin to water." So my mouth begins to water.

And it says, "granny gimmeh," which is give me.

And then he also talks about, fuh it to cool down good, which would mean for it to cool down good.

So you can see a lot of those words are kind of written phonetically how he might pronounce them or they're from his local dialect, but we can very easily work out what they mean in English.

We are now going to look at another poem from Dancing in the Rain, which is called Tell me Mama.

And again rather than me read it, we are going to watch John Lyons recite it from a video from CLPE.

Children are very curious.

They want to know things.

You are looking at a world that is fresh in their eyes, and they want to know.

So this poem is called Tell me Mama.

Tell me, Mama, where does the sun come from in the morning? Where does it go when it reaches the edge of the field? Teacher said the world is round and spinning.

I am standing on the world, how come I don't feel dizzy? And if the world is spinning, why don't the seas and oceans spill out into space? And if the world is round, as teacher said, how come some fields and roads remain flat for miles and miles and miles? When we go walking in the moonlight why does the sun follow us wherever we go? Tell me mama, tell me Please, I want to know.

So again, before we start to analyse this poem in more detail, I want you to think about how you reacted from this poem.

Maybe you've read it, maybe you've listened to John Lyons reading it for you.

I want you to think about these four questions.

What did you like about the poem? What did you dislike about the poem? Do you have any questions or anything that's a bit puzzling or doesn't make sense and did it remind you of anything? Could you make some connections with maybe something you read before or something you've experienced? So pause the recording now and have a think or write down some answers to those four questions.

Right, we're now going to think about the structure of this poem.

So again, we're going to think about the versus, the rhyme, the repetition, and the punctuation.

So you should know what all of those terms mean now.

So I want you to pause the recording and write down some notes about those four different aspects of structure.

Okay, hopefully you've thought about the structure really carefully, and you're ready to hear some of my ideas, but you might have written some different things as well.

So in terms of the first things, again, we can see that John Lyons has split this poem up into verses.

We can see there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 verses this time.

And generally, they're a bit shorter than the verses before but the lines are actually longer, aren't they? So we can see some of the verses are only two lines long.

And I think the longest verse is four lines wrong.

Now, did you spot any rhyme in this poem? I don't think there was any, I didn't see any at the end of the lines.

So no rhyme in this poem.

It's still a poem even though this rhyme doesn't mean it's not a poem.

Any repetition in this poem? Hmm, there's definitely repetition of questions.

So I'm using questions like words like why or when or where, but not so much repetition of words or phrases like in last poem.

And then punctuation.

Of course, it's got lots of questions in this poem.

So what does a question have? Yeah, a question mark.

Well done.

So some question marks in this poem, which is a little bit different from poems that you might have seen before.

Okay, so we're now going to think about the language and the meaning of this poem.

So we're going to think about what is this poem about? Could you summarise it? You're going to say it in a few sentences to tell someone what the poem was about.

Could you do that? And also there's themes.

What are the main ideas? What's the main subject of this poem? So pause the recording and either have a think or write down some notes for yourself now.

Okay, so hopefully you've managed to work out what this poem is about, and you've summarised it for yourself.

I think this poem is about John Lyons, probably as a child, I'm guessing.

Cause often children ask lots of questions I know in my class.

So my pupils ask the most interesting question sometimes.

And I'm sure you ask your teachers and your parents and carers lots of interesting questions as well.

So I think this is John Lyons as a child, asking his mum lots of questions all the way through.

And most of his questions are about the world and about nature.

So I think that's one of the key themes is the world nature.

But also again, it's about that relationship between him and his mom.

A bit like the last poem was about his relationship with his grandma and family as well.

You might have some different themes, and you might have summarised it in a different way.

And that's absolutely fine.

Okay, we are now going to look at the poem in a little bit more detail, and make sure that we understand all of the words within it.

So I've highlighted some of the words I thought we might want to go through to make sure we're all really clear what they mean.

So one of these questions is, where does it go to when it reaches the edge of the field? So he's referring to the sun.

If you've ever seen the sunset before on the horizon, it's almost like the sun disappears behind something.

So I think that's what he means about it disappearing behind the edge of the field as the sun sets.

And that's really because the earth is turning.

And then it refers to the world is round and spinning, which we know the earth is spherical, and it spins on an axis.

But how come you don't feel dizzy? So if you've ever spun round, and round, and round, you feel a bit funny afterwards, you feel a bit dizzy, your eyes might go a bit blurry.

So he's asking how come I don't feel dizzy if I'm spinning all the time, but actually, the Earth is turning really, really slowly.

So you don't feel dizzy in the same way you do if you spin around on your own.

He also asked about why the seas and oceans don't spill out into space? If they're spinning, how come they don't pour out? Like if I poured a glass of water.

I guess the main reason for that would be because of gravity because gravity is pulling the seas down towards the centre of the earth.

So they don't spill out as they move in the same way as a glass of water might.

Then he talks about if the world's round, how come fields and roads remain flat? Which is a really interesting question.

And he also asks about why the moon follows us around.

If you've ever been out late at night and you've seen the moon, wherever you are, you can see the moon.

And that's because we're on earth and then the moon is a long, long way away in space.

So wherever you are on Earth, you can see the moon from there.

Now we've looked at two of John Lyons's poems, I want us to try and compare them.

So I want you to consider the following questions.

What is similar between the two poems that we've read today? What is different? Have a think about their structures, that was their verses, the rhyme, the repetition, the punctuation.

Have a think about the language and think about some of the themes that came up in those two poems. Pause the recording now and write yourself some notes.

Right, we have come to the end of today's lesson.

I hope you enjoyed reading and listening to those two poems as much as I did.

So now I would like you to draw an illustration to represent each poem that we have read today.

So just like John Lyons illustrates his poems to bring them to life, I want you to illustrate them as well.

It's totally up to you how you do it.

You could just do it in one picture, like this example here.

Or you could do separate little pictures to go with different parts of the poem.

If you want to just draw pictures you can, you might even want to copy the poems out, and then you could illustrate around the outside it's totally up to you.

But when you're doing your illustrations, I want you to think really carefully about what's the meaning of the poem? How does it make you feel? So your illustrations should reflect the answers to those two questions.

Okay, so congratulations, you've completed your lesson today.

If you'd like to please share your work with your parents or carer.

I'm sure they would be really interested to read and to hear some of the poems that I've shared with you today.

And I'm sure they'd also really enjoy seeing the illustrations that you have created.

See you in your next lesson.

Goodbye.