Remembrance Day and Poetry

When certain days of the year come around, it is important to acknowledge them. However, many students repeat the same activities each year. For Remembrance Day: they often listen to "In Flanders Field" by Dr. John MacRae, cut out poppies, and glue them on a wreath to hang in their classroom. They have heard the famous poem so many times without a meaningful interaction with it. I designed an activity for French immersion students to reflect on what the poem and Remembrance Day means to them.

As a class, we listened to "Au champs d'honneur" together, to introduce them to the French translation of the poem. We then broke down each stanza into its pattern and noticed that there were alternating rhymes. Each student was then asked to write their own stanza about Remembrance Day in French using the same alternating rhyming pattern that they discovered. The poem could be a response to Dr. John MacCrae, from the perspective of a soldier, a their own perspective of a young Canadian who has not experienced war. One final challenge for them was to also incorporate "différent", "même", or "tout" with the correct gender and number accords. This last part was to bring a bit more meaning in the grammar lesson that the class started with before the poem was introduced.

At the end of class, the poems were collected and placed together to create a wreath. The students interacted with this famous poem and went beyond thinking about its meaning. They interpreted the way it was written and created their own material, while practicing their French writing and grammar.