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Sally Murphy, Australian author

Teacher Tuesday: My Shadow

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Welcome to the second edition of Teacher Tuesday for 2023.

Last week I shared a unit of work for teaching Worse Things in upper primary classrooms. This week  I wanted to share a favourite poem that you can share with classes of any age.

Choosing poetry for the classroom doesn’t have to be hard. There are lots and lots of wonderful collections and anthologies. But there are also a lot of poems in the public domain including one of my favourites: My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

First, listen to it read, with pictures of my shadow enjoying my local beach.

Feel free to use this video in your classroom – I’d love to know what your students think of the poem, my reading – and my amazing beach.

If you’d like a copy of the words, here they are:

My Shadow

by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

What can you do with this poem? Lots of things! Read it aloud to your students – from the early years right through. It is a beautiful poem to read aloud, and fun to learn to recite, too.

But, after you’ve read it, why not link the poem to a science lesson – experimenting with the way that shadows are made by different light sources.  Find out why shadows are sometimes bigger or smaller than the person or object.  The Science Sparks website has some excellent ideas for classroom activities here.

Or, perhaps you want to use the poem as the inspiration for an art lesson. Have students draw around each other’s shadows, for a life size self-portrait.  Use a lamp to make shadows of different sized objects and draw around them. Or, go outside and search for shadows.

If you want more poems and poetry ideas, you might find these older posts of mine useful:

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If you’ve used My Shadow, or have another wonderful poem or poetry idea, feel free to tell me about it in the comments.  Otherwise, I’ll see you next Tuesday.

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