As I bring this look at science and poetry to a close, I'm so please to announce that Janet (Wong) and I had an article about this topic published in the April/May issue of Science and Children, the journal of the National Science Teachers Association. It's entitled "Observe, Explain, Connect" and appears on pages 31-35.
It's widely available (for free). For example, you should be able to read a digital version of this issue at the NSTA site here.
Our article begins:
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and ends:
The more connections we can provide between what children are learning in science and what literacy skills they need to be successful, the deeper their learning of both will be. If poetry can be that vehicle for connecting skills, concepts, and information across the science curriculum, we owe it to children to infuse poetry wherever we can. In sharing science-focused poetry, we can encourage children to think like a poet AND a scientist carefully observing the world around them using all their senses, maintaining an avid curiosity about how things work, and gathering “big words” and key vocabulary in their reading and their writing. As Albert Einstein reminds us, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
It's been so interesting to dig into this interdisciplinary intersection of science and poetry. The 78 poets who contributed to The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science really stepped up to create poems that captured an array of science topics. And as we dug deep into the "Next Generation Science Standards," we examined quite a range of science skills in various sub-disciplines of science. Matching poems to topics and then creating "Take 5" mini-lessons really stretched our science knowledge. THEN, to have our work validated by the National Science Teachers Association-- that was the icing on the cake!
We hope this helps science teachers consider the power of poetry as they plan rich science lessons. And we hope reading and language arts teachers will feel more comfortable talking about science topics as they introduce these poems. It's win-win all around!
2 comments:
I have really enjoyed reading selections from the book this month. Thanks for all your work on it. I hope to get the book in my hands soon.
It just keeps getting better! Congratulations!
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