The Rock and the Bubble by Louisa m alcott Before reading 1

Literature 
teacher’s notes
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B1+
1 of 2
Units

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 After reading
1 Ask a confident student to summarise the main events 
of the poem for the class (or, if you feel your class needs 
extra support, you could do this): A bubble meets a rock 
and asks the rock to move. When the rock says it can’t, the 
bubble becomes aggressive and tries to get past. In doing 
so, it bursts. Remind students that at the end, the birds tell 
their babies to learn a lesson from this. Tell students that 
when there is a lesson to be learned from a story, this is 
known as a moral. Ask them to tell you what the moral of 
the story is (it doesn’t pay to be stubborn/being stubborn 
can have negative consequences).
2 Refer students to the first two verses. Ask a volunteer 
to read them out. Elicit whether they rhyme and ask 
students to underline the words that rhyme. Elicit which 
lines in each verse rhyme. Students could read the 
information in the About the poem box at this stage if 
they haven’t already. Point out that this is a traditional 
format for poems.
Answers
sea/merrily; by/cry
The second and fourth lines rhyme.

CULTURAL INFORMATION
This poem follows a traditional rhyme scheme called 
abcb. This means that the second and fourth lines rhyme. 
It also contains end rhyming – that is, the end words in 
those lines are the ones that rhyme. It contains examples 
of true rhymes and light rhymes: true rhymes are where 
the final vowel and consonant sounds of rhyming words 
match exactly (e.g. cried–pride), whereas in words that 
are light rhymes, one of the words involves rhyming a 
stressed syllable with secondary stress (e.g. sea–merrily; 
sea–pleasantly – the rhyme is on the secondary stress ly 
in both of the longer words).
3 Students are now going to write two verses of their own 
about two unusual objects meeting. First, look at the list 
of words they could use together. Ask students to try and 
think of one or more words that rhyme with each one. 
Students can do this in pairs if you prefer. Discuss their 
ideas together and share ideas on the board.