Some Nature, Some drawing, Some Poetry

"We have lost our sense of time. We believe that we can add meaning to life by making things go faster. We have an idea that life is short — and that we must go fast to fit everything in. But life is long. The problem is that we don't know how to spend our time wisely."-Carlo Petrini: Founder of the Slow Food Movement (September 2008, quoted in the magazine 'Fast Company')

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will read (and write!) poetry attentively, paying attention to language, imagery, and the poetic devices poets use.

Today we:
-Read "Luna Moth" by J. Patrick Lewis and "Invention" by Billy Collins (I read the poems out loud twice, the first reading students closed their eyes and imagined the images in the poem, the second reading students looked at the poem as I read, picking out words and phrases they particularly enjoyed)
-Created a venn diagram comparing and contrasting the poems
-Created artwork for the poems
-Wrote our own poems inspired by objects in our Nature Discovery Center

Invention

Tonight the moon is a cracker,

with a bite out of it
floating in the night,

and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look

like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.

But eventually --
by the end of the month,
I reckon --

it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,

and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen. 

-Billy Collins

Luna Moth

Out of a windless August night
A luna moth in ghostly light
Beat softly on my window screen
Tick-tick-ticking-all silver green.
She whispered secrets in my ear--
I am but a stranger here.
The stars are scrawled across the sky
By ghostwriters, the Moon and I.
You will not see me here tonight--
I have a thousand stars to write

-J. Patrick Lewis