3. HE HAD SUCH QUIET EYES
by BIBSY SOENHARJO
SYNOPSIS
The poem is about a persona, a lady who fell for the
wrong man. She was fascinated with his ‘quiet eyes’ and
believed that his eyes showed his true emotion and
feelings for her. The man’s eyes had the power to
charm her and made her believe him and be nice to
him.
However, the man was actually a ‘pleasure seeking
man’, a flirt. As the lady was truly fascinated and
charmed by the man, she did not listen or did not want
to listen to any advice concerning the man’s true
behaviour. In the end, she realized her error and was
broken hearted.
4. DO YOU KNOW ME?
Aims
To enable students to observe and describe features
using adjectives
To encourage students to put their creativity to
work
7. Steps
Get students to sit in their respective places
facing each other.
Hand out Worksheet 1 to them.
Tell them to look into their friends’ eyes and
draw on the worksheet
what they see.
Get students to move around the room to
complete their worksheet.
8. Tell students to look for
different types of eyes.
Tell them to list in writing the words
describing their friends’ eyes.
Introduce adjectives into the lesson via the
labeling activity.
9. Students are
encouraged to
slowly observe
their friends
eyes and draw
the best that
they can. They
can use colour
pencils if they
choose to.
Students then
label the eyes,
e.g.: round eyes,
big eyes, small
eyes or any
other adjectives
that befit the
eyes.
10. CHAIN READING
Aims
To read poem aloud with correct
stress, intonation, pronunciation
and expression
12. Steps
1. Tell students to make two big circles in
the classroom. Each group consists of 19
students.
2. Get a student to read a line, starting from
the title, followed by the name of the poet
Bibsy Soenharjo and the seventeen lines of
the poem.
13. 3. Encourage students to read with
expression and tell them to try to
memorise the lines.
4. Once the reading starts, it must be
continuous so that the chain ( flow )
will not be broken.
5. Let the students read a few rounds to
be familiar with the poem.
17. Steps
Get students to sit in groups of 3 – 4.
Hand out Worksheet 2 to them. Tell
students to unscramble the letters to form
words that will in turn form short
sentences from the poem.
The group that is able to unscramble all the
sentences correctly wins.
18. Materials
Worksheet 1
QUIET EYES
A BIT OF
NEVER TO
22. BINGO
Teacher prepares the BINGO cards in
advance. Each student will be given a
BINGO card / paper ( Hollywood
Squares ) with different combinations
of words found in the poem
26. Teacher must prepare strips with meanings of
the rhyming words of this poem in advance.
28. Sets rules for this game, for e.g
Let’s play ‘Diagonal Line”
( or vertical / horizontal line ).
Students must wait for the teacher
to draw a Meaning Strip from a
bag/envelope / box and reads out
the phrase /word /sentence loudly.
29. Students look for the one
word which has the same
meaning to the Meaning
Strips drawn.
Strike out the word.
32. Continue with the same BINGO
card until all the nine words are
struck out to play
FULL HOUSE.
The first student who had struck
out ALL the words on the card
and shouted
“BINGO ! ” first, will win.
33. VARIATION
You can play BINGO with the rhymes
or verb tense.
Two or three students may have the same
card
( all words arranged similarly )
but it depends on who will be more alert to
shout ‘BINGO !’ first.
DO NOT FORGET
TO CHECK WITH DRAWN STRIPS.
37. Steps
Distribute worksheet 3 to the students
Haiku poems have a specific pattern. Introduce
the pattern to the students. Haiku has 3 lines
and 17 syllables. The first and last lines have 5
syllables each while the second line has 7
Give students phrases taken from the poem as
the first line.
Tell students to complete the haiku with their
own words .
38. Give them the following instructions:
The chair is a hot seat.
The person sitting on the chair is suspected to be Mr Nobody.
Students are to ask Mr Nobody questions about what he does. This is
where the content of the poem comes in useful. This is a perfect
opportunity to practise ‘wh’ questions.
Students can also ask about Mr. Nobody’s other wrongdoings (which
may not be in the poem). Let their imagination run!
Mr. Nobody has to refute/deny their accusations. His role is to
convince the group that he is not Mr Nobody. Alternatively, his role
could be to convince them that he is not guilty of any wrongdoings as
mentioned in the poem.
Get other students to try out the HOT SEAT.