“J'adore la pizza” by Karen Kransky: Finding rhyming words in a French poem

This lesson is designed to increase students' awareness of some French letter-sound combinations that rhyme, in spite of being spelled differently using the poem, "J'adore la pizza" by Karen Kransky.

A lesson plan for grades 3–5 Second Languages

By Laura Hemphill

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Related topics

• Learn more about French, food, listening, pronunciation, read-alouds, rhyming, second languages, and shared reading.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• identify rhyming words and syllables orally and in writing
• point out silent letters
• continue the rhyming pattern by adding original lines to the poem orally and in writing
• read the expanded poem aloud with accuracy of pronunciation and fluency

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

2 days

Materials/resources

• copy of Book D of the Collection Imagination series from Addison-Wesley, pp. 17-32
• visuals of food items mentioned in poem and a few food items not mentioned in poem
• word labels for people and foods from poem
• transparency and student copies of cloze version of poem script
• various colored pens for transparency
• prepared sets of rhyming words and syllables on card-stock
• scissors
• student copies of lists of new rhyming words to match
• large chart paper or flip chart for shared writing
• materials for student use in writing/illustrating new sentences
• blank paper
• pencils, crayons, or markers

Pre-activities

To focus students’ awareness of sounds, brainstorm with the class words that rhyme with food items in English (spaghetti/confetti). Provide some examples of French words that rhyme (omelette/chaussette).

Tell the children that they will be reading a big book poem that contains the names of food items. Post a series of food visuals on the board. Elicit the names of the items and tell the students to listen to the poem and select the food items mentioned in it.

Activities

Introduction

This lesson is designed to increase students’ awareness of some French letter-sound combinations that rhyme, in spite of being spelled differently. In the poem, “J’adore la pizza” by Karen Kransky, a little girl tells what foods she, her family, and friends like. The name of each person rhymes with the food s/he likes. Students will explore the big book through shared reading, phonemic activities and will expand the poem by generating in shared writing new sentences containing rhyming syllables. Students will use the expanded poem to practice accuracy of pronunciation and fluency.

Shared reading

1. The teacher reads the big book aloud without stopping, using expression and clarity of pronunciation. On each page she points out the people and food mentioned in the poem.
2. Students select visuals of foods mentioned in the poem and remove others from the board.
3. To help students associate rhymes with the food visuals, the teacher asks: Qui aime les pommes frites, Gervais ou Marguerite? Qui aime les hamburgers, Melanie ou Robert? etc.
4. The teacher reads each page of the big book aloud, as students sequence the food visuals on the board. Students post word labels for the people and food items above each visual.
5. Using the visual and written cues from the board, the students chime in as the teacher rereads the poem.

Alphabet, phoneme, or phonics awareness

6. The teacher hands out student copies of worksheet containing the poem script with blanks and a word bank (cloze activity). The students suggest words that go in each of the blanks.
7. On a transparency of the poem script the students will circle rhyming words, using different color pens for each rhyming pair.
8. The teacher presents each rhyming word, written on card-stock in black marker. Students pronounce the first word. The teacher uses scissors to cut off the rhyming syllable. She then replaces it with a color-coded version of the syllable. She does the same thing to the second word in the rhyme pair, so students can see the letter-sound combinations that rhyme. For example, the two rhyming words gervais and poulet would be cut into gerv/ais and poul /et. She pronounces the rhyming syllables clearly and asks the students if all of the letters are pronounced. Students will identify silent letters in the rhyming syllables. This continues through all of the rhyming pairs found in the poem.
9. The teacher will read each rhyming pair and the students will repeat after her. Together the students and teacher will read the list for rhyming words.
10. Students will then reread the big book with volunteers reading aloud one page each.

Shared writing

11. Provided with a list of names and a list of foods not mentioned in poem (use the rhyme worksheet), the students will select the rhyming pairs: Patrice/saucisses, Barbara/chocolat, etc.
12. Using the rhyming pairs from the lists or creating new ones of their own, students will dictate new sentences as an expansion of the poem, and the teacher will record them on large chart paper. For example, Gerard aime les epinards, mais moi, j’adore le pizza.

Assessment

Each student writes and illustrates one of the new sentences to the poem. They read aloud their sentences to the class.

The teacher uses Rubistar rubric to rate students’ fluency and accuracy of pronunciation.

Supplemental information

Allen, Janet. 2002. On the Same Page: Shared Reading Beyond the Primary Grades. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Comments

This lesson plan was created as a result of the June 2004 Foreign Language Literacy Institute hosted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The lesson reflects certain reading methods introduced at this institute, specifically those that deal with Alphabet, Phoneme and Phonics Awareness, Shared Reading, and Shared Writing.