Chapter 10 — The Swing

Chapter 10 of the Class 4 English NCERT textbook (Santoor), "The Swing", presents the classic poem by Robert Louis Stevenson in which a child describes the joy of swinging high into the blue air and spotting rivers, trees, cattle, and the countryside beyond the wall. The chapter pairs the poem with grammar activities on words that function as both verbs and nouns, sentence-expansion exercises, preposition practice, and a tongue twister on the "W" sound. Download the PDF and read the full summary and Q&A below.

• The Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson — The chapter opens with Stevenson's well-known poem about a child swinging up into the blue air and looking down on a green garden and brown roof. The child sees rivers, trees, cattle, and the countryside when the swing goes over the wall. The poem has a joyful, rhythmic quality with rhyming pairs such as swing/thing and wide/countryside.
• Words Used as Both Verbs and Nouns — The chapter introduces the idea that a single word can be a verb in one sentence and a noun in another, using 'swing' as the opening example: 'I swing on a swing.' Students practise this pattern with the words dance, play, answer, fly, and waves — circling the verb form and underlining the noun form in given sentences.
• Sentence Expansion (Stringing Together) — The 'Let us Learn' section shows how a short sentence can be made longer by adding one detail at a time, using the example of Jeevan waiting for the bus. Each new sentence adds a phrase — 'for the bus', 'all morning', 'in the rain', 'because his scooter was in the garage' — building writing skills step by step.
• Rhyming Words and the Tongue Twister — Students listen to the poem again and list rhyming pairs, with swing/thing given as a starter example and ring/king suggested as additional words they can find. The 'Let us Speak' section introduces the tongue twister 'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…' and asks students to practise the 'W' sound by forming an 'O' shape with the lips, contrasting it with the /V/ sound.

1. 01Poem 'The Swing' is by Robert Louis Stevenson and is part of Unit 4 (Up High) in Santoor Grade 4
2. 02The child in the poem sees rivers, trees, cattle, and the countryside when the swing goes over the wall
3. 03New vocabulary introduced: pleasantest, cattle, countryside
4. 04Grammar focus: words that work as both a verb and a noun (swing, dance, play, answer, fly, waves)
5. 05Writing activity: sentence expansion by adding phrases one at a time, using Jeevan and the bus as the model
6. 06Prepositions practised through a garden picture — on, beside, between, above, in front of, behind, under
7. 07Rhyming activity: students list rhyming word pairs from the poem and add two more of their own
8. 08Tongue twister 'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck' is used to practise the 'W' sound