Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain Discussion Guide
As You Read
To build appreciation for the fun of repetition and rhythm, invite six choral reading groups of three or four students to say the lines assigned to them as you come to those lines in the story-poem and point to the choral-reading group.
Ki-pat, whose cows
were so hungry and dry,
Group 1
They mooed for the rain
to fall from the sky;
Group 2
To green-up the grass,
all brown and dead,
Group 3
That needed the rain
from the cloud overhead—
Group 4
The big, black cloud,
all heavy with rain,
Group 5
That shadowed the ground
on Kapiti Plain.
Group 6
Guided reading questions might focus on (1.) the kinds of animals that live on Kapiti Plain; (2.) which animals are wild and which kind is domesticated (the cattle); (3.) why Ki-pat feels such concern for the cattle (He and his people depend upon cattle for milk, meat, leather, and so forth; Ki-pat's job is to care for the cattle; being domesticated, the cattle won't wander away in search of water as the wild animals do); (4.) how the plain changes after the rains come.
Questions like the following can help you elicit students' personal responses to the story: (1.) How do you feel when your land needs rain and a raincloud above just won't burst open? (2.) What part of this story seems like real-life? What part seems like make-believe? (Can an eagle-feather on an arrow really bring rain?) (3.) Why is an eagle—unlike, say, a chicken or a robin—a good symbol for rain? (Eagles are powerful, and fly high in the sky where the rainclouds are.) (4.) What story do you think Ki-pat tells his son about how to bring rain to Kapiti Plain?
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