Chapter 8 — A Show of Clouds

Chapter 8 of the Class 2 English NCERT textbook (Mridang), "A Show of Clouds", is a poem about a child who lies on their back, looks up at the sky, and imagines cloud shapes as a bear, a sailing ship, and an elephant waving its trunk.

• The Poem: A Show of Clouds — A child lies on their back and gazes up at the sky. In each verse, they imagine a cloud taking a different shape — a big white bear, a sailing ship, and an elephant waving its trunk — and finds it great fun.
• Speaking Activities — Children are asked to sit outside and watch clouds go by, then tell the class what they saw. They also discuss what colours clouds can be — white, grey, black, and others — by ticking the colours they know.
• Sentence Pattern Practice — The chapter practises three simple sentence structures: 'When I look up, I see ___', 'When I look down, I see ___', and 'When I close my eyes, I see ___'. Children fill in these patterns with their own observations or imagination.
• Writing Questions — In the writing section, children answer questions about the animals the child saw in the clouds, name three things they see in the sky during the day, and write what they see in the sky at night.
• 'ck' Sound Words — A listening activity introduces the 'ck' sound using the poem's word 'back'. Children repeat word families such as back, pack, lack, jack, rack, pick, tick, flick, thick, pluck, duck, muck, and truck, noticing the common 'ck' ending sound.

1. 01The poem repeats the line 'As I lie on my back, looking up at the sky' in every verse.
2. 02The child sees three cloud shapes: a big white bear, a ship sailing on a white sea, and an elephant waving its trunk.
3. 03The last verse says 'Oh! It's fun, it's fun to me, to see whatever I want to see.'
4. 04Sight words taught in this chapter include: as, up, at, my, sky, back.
5. 05New vocabulary words are: lie, bear, sea, sailing, waving.
6. 06The 'ck' sound is practised using word groups: back/pack/lack/jack/rack, pick/tick/flick/thick, pluck/duck/muck/truck.
7. 07Children are asked to observe real clouds outside and report what they saw to the class.