Chapter 3 of Class 5 English Santoor (Unit 2: My Colourful World) features Christina Rossetti’s celebrated lyric poem The Rainbow, which compares human-made boats, ships, and bridges on rivers with the far grander clouds that sail across the sky and the rainbow that builds a gleaming road from earth to heaven.
What Class 5 English Chapter 3 Covers
Boats and Ships vs Sailing Clouds — Boats sail on rivers and ships sail on the seas, but the poet observes that clouds sailing across the vast blue sky are far prettier than any vessel built by human hands.
River Bridges vs the Rainbow’s Sky Bridge — There are bridges on the rivers that look as pleasing as you please, yet the bow that bridges heaven and overtops the trees — the rainbow — builds a road from earth to sky that is prettier far than these.
Visual Imagery &VIBGYOR Spectrum — Explores how sunlight passing through raindrops splits into the seven colours of the rainbow (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red) and how poets use comparison to celebrate nature.
Vocabulary — Compound Words & Rhyming Pairs — Practices rhyming patterns (seas/these, please/trees), compound words (rainbow, sunlight, raindrop, treetop), and descriptive adjectives for weather and sky scenes.
Exercises in Chapter 3
- Let us Think & Speak: Compare what sails on rivers, seas, and across the sky; explain what ‘the bow that bridges heaven’ refers to; recite the poem with rhythm and discuss when rainbows appear.
- Let us Learn, Write & Do: Form compound words from word cards, write a short descriptive paragraph on a rainy day or rainbow, and colour/label the seven bands of the rainbow.
Read Class 5 English Chapter 3 Online
More Chapters
- Previous: Chapter 2: Gone with the Scooter
- Next: Chapter 4: The Wise Parrot
- All English chapters and the other Class 5 books: Class 5 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
- Every book chapter by chapter: NCERT chapter wise PDF
FAQ
Who wrote the poem ‘The Rainbow’ in Class 5 English Santoor?
The poem ‘The Rainbow’ was written by the famous English poet Christina Rossetti.
What does ‘the bow that bridges heaven’ mean in the poem?
‘The bow that bridges heaven’ refers to the rainbow, whose curved arch across the sky looks like a colourful bridge connecting the earth, overtopping the trees, all the way to the sky.