Introduction:
Valentines day presents an opportunity to explore a topic that can genuinely interest and hold the attention of children of a certain age. This lesson will give students the opportunity to write a poem and have it delivered to their secret love.

Aims:

• To revise dates

• To raise awareness about words which rhyme through a Valentines poem.

• To revise colours through noun collocation

• Introducing countable and uncountable nouns (roses / sugar)

• To write own poem

Materials:

• Word cards in the shape of half a broken heart

• The white board and different coloured board pens

• A photo of yourself and a photo of one of your family members or friends

• A worksheet with a poem frame on it - see below

• One envelope per student

• A box to post the letters into

Stage 1: Introduction to Valentine's Day

• Draw a large heart on the board and elicit the word 'heart'. Check pronunciation of the 'h' sound. Ask : 'What's the date today?' A :'The 14th of February.' Say : 'Today is a special day. Why?' Some may answer with no problem at all. Remember you can replace 'today' with 'tomorrow' or on 'Saturday' etc.

• Show the class a photo of yourself and stick it up on the board on the right hand side of the heart. Then show the class a photo of your mum, dad, other family member or a friend and stick it on the left hand side of the heart. This should grab their attention and arouse their interest through personalisation of the lesson. Explain that you love this person and today you send them a card, flowers, chocolate and a poem to show them that you love them because it's Valentine's Day. Write 'Valentine's Day' at the top of the board.

Stage 2: Word Find

This is to generate and share known vocabulary and is adapted from a game on the Kids' Domain website. The aim here is to lead into the subject of Valentine's Day through a fun and involved activity while looking at related words. This works better with more advanced levels as they have more vocabulary.

• In the middle of your large heart write up a Valentines day related word such as: Valentine, Chocolate, Romance, Flowers etc. and ask the class to find as many little words as possible within the word in a two minute time limit
  Example: Chocolate
  Words: late, at, ate, tea, cool, hat, hot, cat, coat...

• You can split the class into teams of four students to increase the pace and excitement of the activity.
  Scoring: give points for each word found, extra points for longer words and extra points if the team is the only one to have found the word.

• You will need to check pronunciation and meaning as they feedback with their words.

Stage 3: Preparation for writing a poem: 'Broken hearted'

• Demonstrate first on the board using the heart you have drawn. Write an object on one half of a broken heart and the colour of it on the other. Make sure the objects and the colours go obviously together i.e. Roses + Red, Sky + blue, Snow + White, and that there is one word for every child.

• They stand up and mingle and holding their half of a broken heart they must say their word out loud and walk around the class until they find the other half of their heart. If you like you can arrange it so that the person they match up with will be the person they write a poem for in Stage 5. This may not be practical in your classroom. Ask beforehand if you can rearrange the furniture to make it possible.

• They should then sit next to their new partner and feedback to the class the word partnership.

• Stick the cards onto the board to refer to when writing the poem in Stage 5.

Stage 4: Roses are red

Introduce the poem:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet.
And so are you.

-Anonymous

• Explain that anonymous means we don't know who wrote it. Wipe off the split in your heart from the board and the two words which demonstrated the previous activity. In its place write up the traditional Valentine's card love poem.

• Drill the poem a few times touching the words on the board as you and the class say them.

• Now wipe off one of the words e.g. red and continue to say the poem and pointing to the words remembering to point to the gap where the word 'red' was.

• Then wipe off another word. This time it could be blue. Say the poem and point to the words and gaps where words were. Do this until there is no poem left just gaps. Your class will then be reciting the poem rather than reading it.

• Now write the poem back onto the board. Better still get one of the students with the help of his/her classmates to write the poem back onto the board.

• Now draw their attention to the fact that with 'Roses' and 'Violets' we use 'are' but with 'Sugar' we use 'is'. Look back at the cards stuck on the board used in Stage 3.

• Elicit from the class whether we use 'is' or 'are'. Apart from saying that in English some nouns use 'is' and some use 'are', you shouldn't develop this further today but they do need to know whether the nouns you've provided take 'is' or 'are' in order to write their poems.

Stage 5: Writing the poem

• Ask the children to choose a friend in the class they would like to write a poem too. You can also suggest family members so they can take the poems home. The advantage of choosing someone in the class is the potential to distribute the poems and for them to have to read another poem.

• You could put everyone's name into a hat and then they all pick a name of the person to write a poem to. This way you ensure that everybody has a poem. Make sure you're sensitive to their age. They may only want to write a poem to another girl and not a boy etc. You know them best so if need be work it so that you choose who they send the poem to.

• Distribute a worksheet with a poem frame on it. eg

• Do an example with them on the board using nouns in the first slots and colours in the second. Maybe if they are short of ideas you could suggest brainstorming suitable words so there is a word bank on the board otherwise they'll all be asking how to spell words, or sitting there doing nothing.

• Remind them that lines 2 and 4 must rhyme or 'sound the same'. If they are struggling to write on their own or you anticipate that they may find it difficult, you could get them to do it in pairs.

Stage 6: Review

• Distribute the envelopes.

• Tell them to put the poem into an envelope and to put the person's name on the front.

• Tell them that they mustn't write their name on the poem as it should be a secret or anonymous.

• They could post the poems into a box and one of the pupils can be the postman and deliver them.

• Get them to read out their poems.

• They could vote on the best one. Remind them they are anonymous.

Homework:

They could make a list of nouns they find in their fridge. Explain it to them as 'objects'. Or give them a picture of an empty fridge for them to fill and then label. Tell them to draw what they have in their own fridge at home. Food is a common theme used to explain countable and uncountable nouns using examples such as bread, sugar, milk, rice, flour etc.

Recommendations for follow up:

• More work on Countable and Uncountable nouns and colour adjectives. Categorize the nouns they collect for homework on the board and they could make up sentences such as 'milk is white' 'bread is white or brown' 'rice is white or brown'.

• Then you could work on 'There is a' and 'There are some' for descriptions. Give them another copy of an empty fridge. They have to describe their homework drawings to their partner.

• You can also work on prepositions of place; next to, under, on, in etc.

• You could do some work on sounds and spelling. Start with words that are spelt the same and sound the same before creating lists and why not another poem using words which sound the same but are spelt differently. Make sure that you provide them with a frame to work with and that you've looked at the rhythm together before they try to write a poem. Try using some traditional nursery rhymes or look at the LearnEnglish Kids web page for some great poems and related activities.

Internet links:

Shows how to make tissue paper flowers.
www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/flowers/tissueflower/

Has more valentines crafts to do.
www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/valentine/

Has pictures for making cards.
www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/val/color.html

A Valentine's song to the tune of Row Row Row your boat.
http://www.songsforteaching.com/maryflynn/lovefeels.htm

Gives you a great list of books about love and Valentines day. Two examples Guess how much I love you and Roses are Pink, Your feet really stink. This book is about writing valentines poems to your classmates.
http://literacyconnections.homestead.com/ValentinesDayBooks.html 

Gives you some more links to cultural related sites - including Valentines day.
www.primlangues.education.fr/php/sitographie.php

A food and 'I like' song.
www.primlangues.education.fr

General suggestions of what to do in class and reference to the Valentine's song on the Assistant's CD.
www.ciep.fr/malletgb/annex3.htm -

A lesson plan about What is Pink? Lots of guessing and creating a class poem.
www.ciep.fr/malletgb/docs/fiche5A.pdf 

By Jo Bertrand