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
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.
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Poetry Friday: My Shadow
Last Friday I shared some of my favourite poems from my childhood. I chose just three, but there were some really fabulous ones that didn’t make last week’s post, including one that ranked a few mentions in the comments: My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Coincidentally, I’ve been aware in my many beach walks over the past few months, of how often I capture photos of my own shadow – either deliberately or not ( I call them shadow selfies, except, because they’re of me, they are SALfies). So, I thought I’d collect up some of those photos and share them, with the poem. As you listen, see if you can spot the dolphins – a mother and her new calf, who I spent an hour walking with a couple of weeks ago.
And, here’s the poem, which is in the public domain:
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 sleepyhead,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
Poems That Make Me Tingle #4
On my recent trip to Townsville, I walked along the ocean front and wondered at the great variety of boats out on the water. There were boats being rowed
and paddled
and raced.
There were little boats with sails and huge ships
And even memorials to ancient boats
to remind us that people have travelled these waters for a long, long time.
And all this boaty-wonder, in turn, brought to mind yet another favourite childhood poem, this time by Robert Louis Stevenson. I think this one made me tingle because of the amazing word-picture it created. I could see that river, and those little boats bobbing along, off to some far-flung place. My version of Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses shows the boats as made of leaves, but I also remember thinking of them as paper boats or just little toy boats.
I love how something like watching boats on the ocean can bring back a poem I’ve loved since I was really young. That’s the magic of good poetry.