Chapter 10 — The Crow

Chapter 10 of the Class 2 English NCERT textbook (Mridang), "The Crow", tells the story of a black crow who collects peacock feathers to look beautiful, only to be reminded by other crows that he is already beautiful just as he is.

• The Poem: A Crow Who Wanted to Be Beautiful — The poem tells the story of a black crow who was not happy with how he looked. He wanted colourful feathers, so he collected peacock feathers and stuck them on his tail, wings, and head.
• The Message: Be Happy With What You Are — When the crow danced saying he was now beautiful, the other crows laughed and told him he was already beautiful in black. The poem teaches children that real beauty comes from who you are, not how you look.
• New Words and Sight Words — The chapter introduces new vocabulary words such as colourful, feather, wings, picked, fool, love, beautiful, peacock, and another. It also practises sight words like once, as, how, one, all, and now.
• Speaking and Listening Activities — Children are asked to talk about birds they see around their home or school and share what they like about the crow. A listening activity helps them learn to break long words like peacock, feather, beautiful, colourful, and another into syllables by clapping.
• Writing and Rhyming Activities — Children complete a rhyming activity matching bird names to given words — for example, grow rhymes with crow. They also practise making sentences by choosing words from boxes to write their own sentences.

1. 01A black crow collects peacock feathers to look beautiful — he sticks them in his tail, wings, and on his head.
2. 02The other crows tell the crow he is already beautiful in black and they love him for what he is.
3. 03New words in the chapter include colourful, feather, wings, peacock, beautiful, and fool.
4. 04Sight words practised include once, as, how, one, all, now, and it.
5. 05The listening activity teaches children to break words into syllables by clapping — for example, pea-cock, fea-ther, beau-ti-ful.
6. 06A rhyming exercise asks children to complete bird names that rhyme with given words, such as grow–crow and carrot–parrot.
7. 07Children draw their favourite bird and write its name as part of the chapter activities.