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ESL Activities: World Geography and the Rainbow Alliance

World Geography and the Rainbow Alliance (rtf File)
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Students examine the issue of belonging.

In a world of increasing migration Meiling Jin addresses the question of rootlessness, establishing a contrast between present-day reality and an imagined ideal, in her poem, World Geography and the Rainbow Alliance. These activities were originally designed for ESL students from an intermediate level upwards but are relevant for all students.

Download Teacher's Notes.
Download I Essential ingredients and II Dream and reality and distribute to students.

I Essential ingredients
Ask students to tick the reasons that they consider essential to make people think they belong to a place. As a class discuss each other's opinions:
What were the three reasons ticked most often?
Discuss why these reasons are so important.
If these three reasons are considered, how many people in the class feel they belong to the place where they live?
If not, to where do they feel they belong and why?

II Dream and reality
Teacher or student reads the poem to the class.
Discuss the words in the vocabulary gloss. Explain that there is a contrast in the poem between things that exist in the 'real' world and things that are in a 'dream' world of the future or the past.
Students read the poem silently. Class listens while the poem is read again.
Consider whether parts of the poem belong to either of the categories in the grid on the handout? Working with a partner or small group students tick the appropriate column. Students get together with another group.
Does everyone have the same answers?
Which column was ticked for 'you'?
Who could 'you' be?
Were different columns ticked for 'rainbow' and 'end of the rainbow'?
With the other group talk about the possible meanings of a rainbow.
What does the metaphor 'ancestors coffins' mean?
Does everyone in the group agree?

III Rainbow Alliance
Ask students to form groups of three or four and imagine that they are explorers who arrive at the end of the rainbow and find a country of goodness. Students jointly construct a short written report to send home for the Travel Page of their local newspaper. In it, students tell their readers the name of the country and write about some of the following:
the political system (a democracy? a monarchy?)
family institutions (marriage? families?)
the way children are treated (before they go to school; kind of school...?)
leisure activities
religious practices
the population (all the same race or multicultural...?)
special features.
Students read their reports to the rest of the class.

Copyright Acknowledgement
Poem: World Geography and the Rainbow Alliance, © Meiling Jin, Black Women talk Poetry, 1987. Reproduced by permission of the poet, Meiling Jin.
Activities: Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press from Paths into Poetry, Joanne Collie and Gillian Porter Ladousse © Oxford University Press,1991

RNW lesson ideas:
Pieces of the World,
Icons,
Australian Settlers
RNW fact sheet:
Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Migrants
Other poetry activities in Paths into Poetry, Joanne Collie and Gillian Porter Ladousse, Oxford University Press, 1991.