Archive for December, 2008

Poetry in the Classroom - Hummingbird Nest

Published by Tricia on December 12, 2008 in poetry in the classroom and life science. 0 Comments

The spring before we left our first house, a robin built a nest in the pyracantha tree just outside my bedroom window. I marveled that this bird could build such a sound nest amid the thorns of the tree. I spent many early mornings watching her build the home that would soon become host to three beautiful eggs. William was 5 at the time, so together we would sit, and watch, and wait. The wait was excruciating for us, but this didn’t seem to matter to the vigilant mother. I shed tears when the chicks arrived and a few more when they were gone. I did not photograph these events, though now I wish I had. Joyce Sidman had a similar experience, which she documented at Nesting with Robins. Seeing spring erupting around me puts me in mind of these baby birds, and how poetic this particular cycle of life can be.

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Kristine O’Connell George had a similar experience with hummingbirds, which later became her book Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems. In it she describes a hummingbird’s building of a nest in a potted ficus tree on her patio, as well as the hatching and growth of the baby birds. An extensive author’s note describes how she kept a hummingbird journal and the joy brought to the family by simply observing the birds over the course of two months. There is also information about hummingbirds, as well as a list of selected books for both younger and older readers.The book begins with the poem, Visitor.

A spark, a glint,
a glimpse
of pixie tidbit.
Bright flits, brisk zips,
a green-gray blur,
wings, zings, and whirr–I just heard
a humming of bird.

What follows are poems that describe the dive-bombing of the family by a bird very determined to protect it’s territory, nest building, egg hatching, nestling care and growth, flight practice and the inevitable empty nest. Poems are written from the perspective of the observer, as well as the disgruntled dog and cat. (”I’m a prisoner–because of a bird. How absurd.”) You can read another poem from the book. You can also listen to the author read a few of the poems.

The poems in the book are accompanied by Barry Moser’s vibrant watercolors, which exquisitely capture the world of the hummingbirds. Each one contains a date that allows readers to the see the progression of events. The poems themselves are moving and full of the emotion that comes with watching an amazing event like this unfold. The rich imagery and detailed observations make this a great choice for both science and language arts.

While you may not have the opportunity to watch the building of a nest and hatching of chicks with your students, there is generally plenty of activity on school grounds that can be chronicled over time. Journaling about these changes can help students to become better observers, and journal entries can later provide background for writing poetry.

If you want to take these ideas further, the following sites offer additional resources for this topic.

Finally, I recommend connecting this book with the informational book, A Nest Full of Eggs by Priscilla Belz Jenkins.

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You can find more books on eggs and nesting birds at Springing to Life.

Poetry in the Classroom - Anthologies in Math and Science

Published by Tricia on December 11, 2008 in poetry in the classroom, math and science. 0 Comments

When I was teaching kids on a daily basis, I began my lessons with a cartoon, a poem, or short excerpt from a book. It was a great way to “hook” kids into the ideas that would be presented while getting them interested in learning more. Cartoons from The Far Side were a staple, as were Calvin and Hobbes (there’s a lot of bad science in those babies). I had a huge classroom library, so books weren’t a problem. When we studied insects I read excerpts from James and the Giant Peach, and told students their job was to determine if certain statements were true. When we studied electricity I read an excerpt from Dear Mr. Henshaw where Leigh builds an alarm system (circuit!) into his lunch box. Poetry, however, was a bit harder to come by. Sure, there was a great deal of nature poetry by some classic poets, but poetry that touched kids seemed hard to find. Keep in mind that this was during the 80’s, so if it wasn’t Silverstein or Prelutsky, I couldn’t find it in my library.

I carried my love of literature with me into graduate work, and even though it wasn’t the topic of my Masters thesis or dissertation, I couldn’t let it go. When I began to think seriously about it again in the late 90’s, I found Lee Bennett Hopkins, a poet himself and the man behind a number of poetry anthologies on a huge range of topics. I was hooked. Two anthologies I wish had been available when I was teaching are Marvelous Math: A Book of Poems and Spectacular Science: A Book of Poems.

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Both books open with poems by Rebecca Kai Dotlich. Here is an excerpt from each.

Marvelous Math
How fast does a New York taxi go?
What size is grandpa’s attic?
How old is the oldest dinosaur?
The answer’s in Mathematics!What is Science?
What is science?
So many things.

The study of stars–
Saturn’s rings.
The study of rocks–
geodes and stones–
dinosaur fossils,
old-chipped bones.

(Note: The book What is Science? is a different version of the poem first published in the anthology. The illustrations are lovely and make it a stand out title on its own.)

The 16 poems in Marvelous Math and 15 poems in Spectacular Science provide thoughtful invitations to ponder the nature of science and math and the work that scientists and mathematicians do. They are perfect lesson starters for a variety of topics. Spectacular Science contains poems on stars, wind, snowflakes, seeds, magnets, dinosaur bones and more. Marvelous Math contains poems on calculators, division, multiplication, fractions, time, and other topics.

I suppose one of the things I enjoy about using these poems is that they can send discussion in any number of directions. They also make great models for writing to learn activities. Finally, they allow teachers to make great connections to other books and poems. Here’s an example. Are you ready? Just follow the bouncing ball and see how I get from a poem in Marvelous Math to Loreen Leedy’s new book. Here is an excerpt from p.8.

from “Take a Number”
by Mary O’Neill

Imagine a world
Without mathematics:

No rulers or scales,
No inches or feet,
No dates or numbers
On house or street,
No prices or weights,
No determining heights,
No hours running through
Days and nights.

(Note: This was originally published in 1968 as the book Take a Number which introduced the basic concepts of mathematics in poetic form.)

We do live in a math world, even if math-phobics are reluctant to admit it. Enter Math Curse, by Jon Scieszka. It begins:

On Monday in math class, Mrs. Fibonacci says,
“You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem.”
On Tuesday I start having problems.

Through the eyes of a child we see that getting dressed, eating breakfast, catching the school bus, eating in the cafeteria, English, P.E., geography and just about everything else is related to math. How are these “problems” solved? With math, of course!

For those students who still see math as a curse, it’s helpful to think about the prompt at the beginning of Mary O’Neill’s poem. What would a world without math look like? In her latest book, Missing Math: A Number Mystery, Loreen Leedy shows readers what happens when the numbers all over town suddenly vanish. Beyond the obvious delight some children will have when they recognize that math can’t be done (for shame!), they will soon recognize the dire situation we face without numbers, when we can no longer play sports (no scores), watch television (no channels), elect officials (no votes), send mail (no addresses), nor do lots of other things. This book is an imaginative romp through a world devoid of numbers that makes readers really take stock of the value of numbers and math in their lives.

I’ve gone off on a math tangent, so let me get back to science. As I mentioned earlier, there are many good books that can be connected to these anthologies. Let me tell you about two more books that make excellent companions. The first is Scien-Trickery: Riddles in Science by J. Patrick Lewis, a book full of poems to be solved on a range of science topics. There are some wonderful pairs that can be made using Spectacular Science and Scien-Trickery, including the poem Magnet by Valerie Worth with the poem Push Me, Pull Me by J. Patrick Lewis, as well as the poem Under the Microscope by Lee Bennett Hopkins with the poem Buggety Buggety Boo! by J. Patrick Lewis.

The last book that I think belongs in this set of lesson starters is Jon Scieszka’s Science Verse. It begins:

On Wednesday in science class, Mr. Newton says,
“You know, if you listen closely enough, you can hear the poetry of science in everything.”
I listen closely. On Thursday, I start hearing the poetry. In fact, I start hearing everything as a science poem.
Mr. Newton has zapped me with a curse of SCIENCE VERSE.

Many of the poems in this collection parody poems by Joyce Kilmer, Lewis Carroll, Ann Taylor, Robert Frost and others, as well as nursery rhymes and childhood songs. Make sure you get a copy with the CD in the back, as the audio is a great deal of fun.

So, are you ready to start a lesson with poetry today? I sure hope so.

Poetry in the Classroom - Rulers of the Earth

Published by Tricia on December 10, 2008 in poetry in the classroom and life science. 1 Comment

They are found nearly everywhere on Earth and comprise the largest phylum in the animal kingdom. In fact, there are more species of arthropods than all other animal species combined. While many people call them “bugs,” this name is misleading, as it includes only insects. Arthropods include animals as diverse as spiders, centipedes, scorpions, crabs, barnacles, butterflies, bees, ants, beetles and many, many others.Examining arthropods up close can be a very interesting unit of study in the elementary, particularly if teachers can get past butterflies. Yes, I know that metamorphosis and life cycles is part of the curriculum, but there are so many other fascinating species to consider. Introducing some of these creatures through poetry is one way to begin. Two books that I find helpful for doing this are insectlopedia by Douglas Florian, and Water Pennies and Other Poems, by N.M. Bodecker.

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The 21 poems in insectlopedia provide an imaginative romp through the world of arthropods. Yes, I know the title says insect, but this collection includes poems about spiders and ticks as well (no crustaceans or centipedes/millipedes, however). Using clever wordplay and illustrations that reflect the humor in the poetry, this volume provides a wonderful introduction to animals as varied as weevils, locusts, mosquitoes, caterpillars, water bugs, and others. The illustrations were done in watercolor on primed brown paper bags with collage. One of my favorites depicts three crickets playing violins, around an image of the moon. The poem reads:

The Crickets
You don’t need tickets
To listen to crickets.
They chirp and cheep for free.
They fiddle and sing
By rubbing each wing,
And never will charge you a fee.

Other poems in the collection take concrete forms, like those for the inchworm and whirligig beetles. Overall, this is a strong and entertaining collection.

Water Pennies contains 32 poems that reflect the variety of life found in, on and around a pond. Illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Erik Blegvad, this posthumous collection is lively and full of delightful imagery. Here is an excerpt from the poem entitled Seeing a Dragonfly Over the Pond on a Sunny June Morning.

So dragonfly
is on
the wing,
the shiny
helicopter
thing.Brand-new
today,
and bold
as brass,
but clear
and brittle
as fine
glass.

The bulk of the poems in this collection do focus on arthropods of one form or another. For poems in which readers may not know about the animal in question, they will find a footnote with a brief bit of information. For example, the poem Summer Skaters includes a footnote that reads, “A skater is a mosquito-like surface skimmer that sticks around until first frost.”

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In addition to these two fine poetry books, I recommend including April Pulley Sayre’s book, Ant, Ant, Ant! An Insect Chant, in which an ant and 59 other insects are named. The book ends with a short informational section that describes the animals.

For those of you looking for additional resources for the study of arthropods, I recommend you explore these sites and materials.

  • This spider unit from Paso Partners includes bilingual information (Spanish) and activities for integrating math and language arts into the study of science.
  • Yucky Roach World lets kids explore life through the eyes of a cockroach.
  • The Glossopedia site on arthropods contains useful information for kids.
  • Try this Education World lesson plan entitled What’s Bugging You?
  • The Understanding Evolution web site has a comprehensive section on arthropods entitled The Arthropod Story.
  • Kids can play a game called Monster Bugs at Scholastic’s Magic School Bus site. Given a drawer full of bug parts, kids put them together to create bugs found in nature or new bugs of their own.
  • If you want to use live animals in your class, check out this lesson on using stick insects in the classroom.
  • The University of Iowa College of Education has created an insect bibliography. (This one has not been updated since 1999, but you will still find many useful titles here.)
  • Orkin has some bug and insect games for kids.
  • The University of Kentucky department of entomology has a variety of fun bug activities.
  • A large collection of insect illustrations are available from the University of Illinois.
  • If you want to integrate even more children’s literature into your study of insects, take a look at this Eric Carle insect unit study.

Poetry in the Classroom - Lighting it Up

Published by Tricia on December 9, 2008 in poetry in the classroom and physical science. 0 Comments

While I can always find many poems for teaching life science and earth science topics, physical science is another story entirely. Poems about energy, sound and matter are much harder to come by. I do, however, have two collections of poems that are wonderful resources for teaching about light in all its forms.

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Flicker Flash, written by Joan Bransfield Graham and illustrated by Nancy Davis, is a collection of 23 concrete poems about light in various forms or things that give off light. Here you will find poems on the sun, a candle, match, lightning, firefly, porch light, light bulb, lighthouse, and much more. Since these are concrete poems they are impossible to reproduce here, but you can preview some of the pages at Google Book Search. One of my favorite poems in the book is Lighthouse, which begins this way.

Oh,
Captain
of the
midnight
sky, you
stretch
your arms
and flash
your eye

This is a cleverly conceived book that provides many opportunities for exploring light in a myriad of forms with young readers.

Light & Shadow, by Myra Cohn Livingston, is a collection of 14 poems accompanied by the photographs of Barbara Rogasky. This is a quiet book that reflects on light and shadow as it accompanies us through the day. The photos and poems work so beautifully together that I have to wonder if the pictures were chosen to accompany the poems, or if the poems were written in response the images. Whatever the case, they make astounding pairs. The book opens with the poem Daylight and a picture of the morning sunrise. Here is the poem.

Light jumps
out of gray dawn
pushing a yellow ball
over patches
of earth and sea,
shoving it higher than
city

buildings,
higher than the
tallest of all mountains
where it

slowly
circles the earth,
exploding the sky with
color.

This is a beautifully written book that demonstrates how light often has a life of its own.

Many teachers enjoy using the Robert Louis Stevenson poem “My Shadow” when studying this topic. Here it is.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow–
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the Sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

I have seen three illustrated books that take very different approaches to the poem. I don’t think any do justice to the poem, but you’ll need to decide if any of them “work” for you.

  • My Shadow, illustrated by Ted Rand, highlights children from all over the world playing with their shadows. This version is a Reading Rainbow book. My problem with it is that poem is told from the perspective of a single child, yet in many of the illustrations, groups of children are depicted.
  • My Shadow, illustrated by Monique Felix, presents the poem through the eyes of a mouse. This book is visually pleasing, however, some of the wording in the poem has been changed to better fit the illustrations. For example, the word children has been replaced with mice, nursie with mom, and arrant with errant.
  • My Shadow, illustrated by Glenna Lang, follows a young girl’s as she travels through a “dream nightscape” with her shadow companion. The travels here are cast by the moon (noon in the poem is depicted as midnight). Scientifically, this one has some serious problems.

(Please note that there is still another version illustrated by Penny Dale, but I have not seen it and, therefore, cannot review it.)

If you are looking for some additional resources for teaching about light and shadows, you may find these to be useful.

Nonfiction Monday - Smart-opedia Junior

Published by Tricia on December 8, 2008 in nonfiction and book review. 2 Comments

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Smart-Opedia Junior: The Amazing Book About Everything, is the perfect book for kids who love to ask questions and their parents. The following seven chapters are divided into more than 90 topical pages:

  • Our Bodies
  • A House to Live In
  • In the City
  • History
  • A World of Plants and Animals
  • A Big, Wide World
  • The Universe

Smart-Opedia Junior opens with an introduction that describes the features of the book. Beyond the information presented on each topic, readers will find these five fun additions (as described in the book).

  • Figure It Out! - Have fun with puzzles and games. Spot hidden animals, read Egyptian Hieroglyphics, make movie sound effects.
  • What About You? - You are a very special person. What are your favorite colors? What’s your birthday? What was the first word you said?
  • Did You Know? - Eye-opening facts about animals, plants, people, and places add more information — to make you even smarter.
  • Number Time! - Discover the size of a lion, how many blocks in a pyramid, and the speed of your sneeze!
  • Kids’ Question - Why does the Moon change shape? How do fish breathe underwater? Why are leaves green? Find answer to real questions like these, asked by kids just like you.

Here is a sample spread showing the What About You? feature.

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The book covers a lot of ground in 192 pages. It includes an extensive table of contents and index. It starts small with an introduction to the child’s world, and then branches out to include the community and larger world. The section on Our Bodies provides a nice introduction to many of the questions kids ask about human growth and development, as well as parts of the body and illness. I found the section on A House to Live In to be the only one that was hard to follow, with  individual pieces seemingly unconnected. It begins by looking at the physical structure of the place (”How Do We Get Electricity, Water and Gas?” and “Who Built the House?”) and then goes on to look at “One Day at Home” (lots of chronology and time-telling) and “What to Wear?”, which looks at clothing and seasons. Next comes nutrition with “A Good Breakfast for Holly”, and “Linked In Living Room”, which looks at all the ways we use technology to keep us connected. It ends “In the Bathroom”.

The next section, In the City, looks at the community and all it offers. The section on History is only 20 pages long, so the areas highlighted need to reflect the interests of readers this age. Need I say more than inventions, dinosaurs and pirates? The choices all make sense for the target audience. A World of Plants and Animals includes information about farming, domestic and wild animals, plants, habitats and life cycles. A Big, Wide World focuses on continents and the biomes found in them, as well as the people who live there. The final section, The Universe, examines space exploration, the solar system (correctly ending with Neptune and describing the dwarf planets of Pluto, Ceres, and Eris), and living in space.

The colorful cartoon drawings and simple sentences make this an appealing book for young readers.  There is much here that curious kids will love.

Book: Smart-Opedia Junior: The Amazing Book About Everything
Publisher: Maple Tree Press
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 192 pages
Grades: K-3
ISBN: 978-1897349304
Source of Book: Review copy received from Raab Associates.

This post was written for Nonfiction Monday. Head on over to Anastasia Suen’s blog and check out all the great posts highlighting nonfiction this week.

Poetry in the Classroom - Ordinary Things

Published by Tricia on December 8, 2008 in poetry in the classroom. 0 Comments

Spring seems so far away right now, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking of it. One of my yearly spring rituals is to pull out my copy of Ordinary Things: Poems From a Walk in Early Spring and read my way through the sights and sounds of spring. Once I’ve done this, I head out with my notebook for a spring walk of my own.

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This lovely book by Ralph Fletcher contains 33 poems divided into three sections — Walking, Into the Woods, and Looping Back. On the backside of each section divider is a poem describing that portion of the walk. Within each section readers find poems covering a range of natural and man-made objects, from fossils and ferns to litter and railroad tracks. There is much here that readers will relate to and recognize. Here is an excerpt from one poem I particularly like, entitled birds’ nests.

When I was small
Grandma cut my hair
and tossed the clumps
onto our lawn.”Birds will use it
to line their nests
and keep the eggs
safe and warm.”

An amazing thing:
my ordinary hair
woven into a bird’s
wild tapestry.

When I was growing up, we threw the debris from the lint trap in the yard for this very reason. Once the pieces disappeared, I wanted to spy on the nests nearby to see just what bits of nature had been included. With a good pair of binoculars, I could see the grasses, sticks, leaves, and in some cases, lint or some errant thread or string.

Last year I wrote a three part series on exploring the natural world. In one of the posts I wrote this about focused observation.

When I first begin to take kids outside, we do two activities designed to help them become better observers. In the first, I assign partner and give each pair a hula-hoop. The pair finds a spot in the yard, field or forest they would like to focus on. The hoop is laid on the ground, where it provides the boundaries for the observational field. How much can you find in this “small” circle? PLENTY! The first job should be to simply sit and look at all that is inside the hoop. Kids should sketch what they see in their journals. How many kinds of grass or vegetation are in the hoop? Knowing the names here isn’t important, but rather recognizing that things look different. Encourage kids to get down on their knees and use their hands or a stick to part the vegetation and see what is beneath. A hand lens will help here. I often set timer this activity and then ask for groups to share what they have found. I also give groups the opportunity to repeat with a second plot so that they can see how different these small areas can be.

The poems in Ordinary Things expand on this notion and demonstrate what can happen when readers look closely at the world around them. I recommend taking children on a nature walk with a journal in hand. Stop along the way for quick writing breaks. Encourage the children to focus on something they see and record a series of words or phrases to describe it. After a few minutes, move along to another spot. The idea here isn’t to draw or photograph what’s been seen, but rather capture the essence of the thing in words. Later on, all these descriptors can be used in writing poems about the walk.

Here are some resources that may help you think a bit more about some of these ideas.

Poetry in the Classroom - Concrete Poems

Published by Tricia on December 7, 2008 in poetry in the classroom. 3 Comments

Poems that take shape are such fun. Here’s an example.

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There are many great poetry books that use concrete forms. Two of my favorites are A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems and Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape.A Poke in the I, written by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka, includes a wide range of poems that are cleverly shaped and written. Eskimo Pie and Popsicle are both poems in the shape of ice cream. Swan and Shadow looks exactly like the title is is a lovely piece of work. You can see it and read it at this concrete poem page.

Doodle Dandies, written by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Lisa Desimini, uses wordplay and surprising “movement” to make the topics come alive. Synchronized Swim Team uses the legs of upside-down swimmers to make its point, while Creep and Slither appears in the shape of a snake, until midpoint when the bulging word bull frog announces what’s been eaten.

Both of these books are surprising and funny and deserve to be studied for the way the collaboration of shape and text makes the topics come alive.

I often encouraged my students to write shape poetry when we were drawing diagrams in class. It was a good way to help them learn more about the parts of plants, cells, electric circuits, and more. Generally they were given a blank outline to fill in with their poems. You can do this with your students. Using shape patterns, encourage them to use the outline of the shape to create their own concrete poems. Here is an example of what a concrete poem might look like if created using the outline of a sailboat.

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Concrete poems are fun to write and challenge children to think in different ways about the objects and events they see in their world. For additional ideas on writing concrete poetry, here are some resources you may find useful.

If you want to read concrete poetry as story with your children, try Joyce Sidman’s lovely book entitled Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry.

Poetry in the Classroom - A World of Wonders

Published by Tricia on December 6, 2008 in poetry in the classroom and geography. 1 Comment

I have been teaching a course on integrating science and social studies for some time now. While I often get puzzled looks from folks when I try to explain this, the elementary teachers I work with recognize that this makes perfect sense. There is tremendous overlap between the science and social studies curriculum, particularly with respect to the topic of geography. The book A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme, written by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Alison Jay, nicely captures this relationship.

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The book opens with a poem entitled Places and Names: A Traveler’s Guide, in which a number of cities and sites with interesting names are named. The poem concludes in this way.

Thousands of spaces are places to be–
Discover the World of GE-OG-RA-PHY!Travel by boat or by car or by plane
To visit East Africa, Singapore, Spain.
Go by yourself or invite a good friend,
But traveling by poem is what I recommend.

What follows are poems about explorers, places on the map (Sandwich Islands, Italy, Angel Falls, Mount Everest etc.), the globe itself (latitude v. longitude, equator and the poles), earth science topics (aurora borealis, San Andreas fault, stalactites v. stalagmites), and many other things.

This is a wonderful book for introducing a mix of geography topics, as well as science topics like biomes, ecology and natural resources. There are a few poems that encourage readers to think about their impact on the earth. The last poem, entitled Walk Lightly, begins this way.

Make the Earth your companion.
Walk lightly on in, as other creatures do.
Let the Sky paint her beauty — she is always
watching over you.

A range of activities can be conducted with respect to these poems. Many of the poems lend themselves to mapping activities. In addition to the opening poem, there are riddles where readers must identify a city, as well as a poem entitled New Names, Old Places, where countries with changed names are described. In addition to the standard calendar bulletin board that appears in many elementary classrooms, I highly recommend a permanent board with a world map in which students can place push pins or “markers” to identify locations studied. This works not only for these poems, but also for places identified in current events and others books students read.

I also recommend laminating the map or placing a layer of plastic over it so that students can label and color it in. For example, the poem 136ºF in the Shade describes the hottest day ever recorded in history. It occurred in the desert of Libya. There is also a rhyming couplet describing the size of the Sahara Desert and a poem on the Mohave Desert. While reading these poems, students can research other deserts of the world and color all of them on the laminated map. From here they’ll be able to draw some conclusions about the characteristics of deserts and the geographic features they share.

For those of you looking for additional resources for using poetry in the teaching of geography and related fields, here are a few ideas.

  • Learn more about the poet J. Patrick Lewis at his web site.
  • Learn more about J. Patrick Lewis in this interview conducted by Elaine of Wild Rose Reader.
  • Poetry of Place - This site encourages the reading and writing of poetry in geography instruction and includes many fine examples of student work.
  • Got Geography! by Lee Bennett Hopkins - This book contains poems about maps, globes, far away places and more.
  • In the 2007 September/October issue of the Journal of Geography you will find an article by Joseph Kirman entitled Aesthetics in Geography: Ideas for Teaching Geography Using Poetry.

Poetry in the Classroom - Animal Senses

Published by Tricia on December 5, 2008 in poetry in the classroom, life science and teaching. 0 Comments

Teaching the five senses is an important part of the elementary science curriculum. While we generally focus on how humans use their senses to explore and understand the world around them, we don’t often think about how animals use their senses to thrive and survive in the wild. Two poetry books that describe how animals use their senses are Voices from the Wild: An Animal Sensagoria and Animal Sense.

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Voices from the Wild, written by David Bouchard and illustrated by Ron Parker, was awarded the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award in 1997. In this collection of imaginative and expressive poems, animals relate the ways in which a particular sense helps them hunt, avoid predators, and care for their young. The book is divided into five sections, one for each of the senses (sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste). Each section features five poems accompanied by a lifelike painting of the animal.

Animal Sense, written by Diane Ackerman and illustrated by Peter Sís, explores the ways that animals navigate the world using their senses. This book is also divided into five sections, each representing one of the senses. The poems are funny and clever and occasionally include made-up words. This book begins:

Hello! A stapler with its tiny fangs
cannot outwit
orangutans.

Rocks are very good at sitting
but never walk
or take up knitting.

Living things all feel the sense
their way through
every happenstance. . . .

Both of these books provide excellent read aloud opportunities for discussing the five senses.

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I like to pair these books with What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. This Caldecott honor book examines the function of ears, eyes, noses and other body parts. Each double-page spread pictures a body part of several different animals, such as noses, accompanied by the question, “What do you do with a _____ like this?” The next double-page spread shows each animal and includes an explanation of how the part functions.

After reading several poems on how different animals make use of the same sense, I share the appropriate set of pages from the Jenkins/Page book. First we look carefully at the “teaser” pictures and try to determine which animals are being pictured. Then we turn the page and read about how the animals use that body part. After this, select one animal and ask students to brainstorm some words and/or phrases that might be useful in a poem describing how the animals uses this sense. Write their ideas on sentence strips. Once you have a number of suggestions, rearrange them and put together a class poem. After you have collaboratively written a poem or two, encourage children to write their own poems that focus on animal senses.

Here are some additional resources for learning about animal senses.

Poetry in the Classroom - The World’s Greatest Poems

Published by Tricia on December 5, 2008 in poetry in the classroom and geography. 0 Comments

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The World’s Greatest Poems, written by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Keith Graves, is a book that highlights in verse and illustration some of the strangest world records, such as the talkingest bird, longest traffic jam, and stone skipping record. Before each poem, the record is briefly described. Here is an example.

The Tallest Roller Coaster
Superman the Escape
Six Flags Magic Mountain
Valencia, California
415-foot steel support structure

You’re swerving north,
You’re swerving south,
Your stomach sits
Inside your month.

You hold your breath,
You lose your nerve,
Your scared to death
At every curve.

You’re feeling very
Sick, but then
You tell your Dad,
“Let’s go again!”

The poems in this book come in a variety of forms, including acrostic, limerick, sonnet and more. Accompanied by whimsical illustrations, Lewis’ verse really shines.

The vast majority of the poems are based on records that include numbers. Before reading the poems, consider asking students to estimate the answers to questions like these:

  • How long was the longest traffic jam (in miles)?
  • How many people did one man kiss in eight hours to set a world record?
  • What is the longest time someone was stuck in an elevator?
  • How tall was the tallest scarecrow?
  • What was the weight of the biggest potato?

After reading the poems, share the actual measurements and find some ways to make these numbers concrete. For example, plot out the traffic jam on a map (1093 miles from Lyons towards Paris), compare the weight of that potato (7 lbs 13 ozs) to something kids can understand, like the weight of a newborn baby, or compare the height of that scarecrow (103 feet and 6.25 inches tall) to the number of cars parked end to end.

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Kids love record-breaking numbers and comparisons of this sort. I recommend pairing this book of poetry with Steven Jenkins’ book Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest, in which he identifies and describes places such as the hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, and windiest places on Earth, as well as the longest river, highest waterfall, deepest lake, highest mountain and more. Once you’ve read this book and shared some of these records of the natural world, look again at Lewis’ poems and encourage students to write some of their own “World’s Greatest” poems.