Taking Care of the Earth

guest post by Madelyn Rosenberg

Both Earth Day and National Poetry Month fall during April, so it’s a good time to introduce you to Take Care, a rhyming book about taking care of the earth and each other.

I wrote Take Care after watching a series of gut-wrenching events unfold in the news. This particular series of events culminated in the nightclub shooting in Orlando. How can we keep doing this to each other? I thought – and have thought, again, many times since. I have similar thoughts when I see people abusing the planet – when someone throws a cigarette butt out a car window or when they find a whale on a beach in Spain with his stomachfull of plastic.

I react with rage. And sadness. And I try to reassure myself that we can learn to take care of each other and the planet and make things better. Poetry, whether we’re writing it or reading it, can be burn or balm. My book is meant to be a balm, though it’s fueled by burn. It begins:

Take care of the world, of the mountains and trees

Tend to the world, all the bumbles and bees

Color the world, with greens and with blues

Heal up the world with the words that you choose

Following are a few related prompts:

Emotion poems

What makes you angry? What makes you sad? What makes you happy and what makes you heal? All poems convey emotion, and for this writing prompt, we’re going to come at it full throttle. The lesson I try to always teach my kids when it comes to writing is that specifics are important. So urge your class, when they’re writing about a particular emotion, to think really hard about the things that make them feel the way they do. Does their emotion have a color? A temperature? A season? Is it tied to a specific event, like a fight with a friend or the loss of a stuffed animal? (Was anyone else riveted by the search for the rabbit lost on the London Underground?) There are no real rules for this one, but for students who thrive with rules, you can tell them the poem has to be the same number of lines as letters in the type of emotion they’re feeling – or a multiple of that if it’s a short one. Challenge: Can you convey the emotion without mentioning it by name?

A letter to the world

Have the class write a letter to the planet. Maybe it’s an apology note. Maybe it’s a thank you note for a dandelion or a dimpled strawberry or the color green. Again, it’s always great when you can get kids to focus on something specific. Want to get them in the right mood? ? Consider a nature walk around the school for inspiration. Prose or poetry for this one, your pick.

A take-care tree

Ingredients:

A tree branch (a fallen one, please =)

A hole punch

String or yarn

“Leaves” cut from recycled paper. It’s fine if there is printing on one side, as long as the other side is blank. Multiple colors help.

A flower pot

Rocks or newspapers

Place the branch in the flowerpot and use rocks or wadded up newspapers to hold it in place. Have students write their ideas for taking care of the world on the paper leaves. Punch a hole in each leaf and attach it to your branch with the string. Use as a reminder and a classroom decoration for Earth Day, Arbor Day, Tu B’shevat or spring. 

ADAPT IT: If your students do the letters-to-the-world prompt, excerpts on tree leaves also make a nice classroom display.  

BIO: As a journalist, Madelyn Rosenberg spent many years writing about colorful, real-life characters. Now she makes up characters of her own. The author of award-winning books for young people, she lives with her family in Arlington, Va. For more information, visit her web site at madelynrosenberg.com or follow her on twitter at @madrosenberg. And if you try this exercise in your classroom, she’d love to see the results!

Writing Connections with Amy Sarig King

by Mary Quattlebaum

Amy Sarig King is the author of many acclaimed YA novels, but Me and Marvin Gardens (Scholastic, 2017) is her first middle-grade novel.  It garnered three starred reviews and was named a 2017 Best Book by the Washington Post.

In an interview with the KidsPost section of the Washington Post, King talks about the childhood experiences that informed the book. She mentions her dog, Stella, as her inspiration for the mysterious creature that gets young readers thinking about recycling in a whole different way. 

Obe loves the cornfields that his family once owned, but now they are being turned into a housing development.  And his best friend is ditching him for the new kids in the neighborhood.  To add to his troubles, Obe discovers a new type of animal by the creek—a slimy tapir-like creature with the friendly personality of a dog.  He names it Marvin Gardens.  Before long, Obe realizes that the creature eats plastic but that its toxic poop is ruining the land.  Can Obe trust his science teacher, Ms. G, to help with the situation?

Below are writing lessons for the classroom or for individual writers ages 8 and up.

FACTS AS INSPIRATION: Classroom Discussion, Part 1:  In the book, Ms. G shares facts about the environment with her students.  As she researched these facts, King herself was horrified to discover that it takes a plastic bottle 500 years to decompose, and that Americans throw away 2.5 million of these bottles per hour.  King created Marvin Gardens as a character that seemingly solves the problem (by eating plastic) but creates another (the toxic chemicals excreted as waste destroy grass, tennis shoes, and pretty much whatever comes in contact with them).

Classroom Writing, Part 1:  Ask students to research several facts about dangers posed to the environment.  For example, habitat loss for cheetahs is pushing them toward extinction in the wild.  Or they might choose one of Ms. G’s facts from the book.

Have them choose one problem and brainstorm ways to solve it.  Encourage them to make these solutions as helpful as they can, even if they may be extreme or somewhat wacky.  (For example, a plastic-eating animal is a rather extreme solution to littering/recycling issues!)

Ask students to give their solution a name (such as Marvin Gardens), write one or two paragraphs on how it would work, and draw a picture or diagram of it.

Classroom Writing, Part 2, Critical Thinking and Writing:  Might this solution create other problems?  List some possible resulting problems.  How might they be solved?

TAKING ACTION, Classroom Discussion, Part 1:  Ask the class to notice environmental problems that are in the school or grounds for two days. For example, leaky faucets in bathrooms, lack of recycling bins, litter on school grounds, lack of native plants for local pollinators. List these things on the board.

Brainstorm ways to address or solve them.  Have the class identify 2 or 3 that they might take action on and help them develop a strategy to do so.

Have them do online research to discover how other students or activist groups have created positive change in these problem areas.

Ask for volunteers to write a short article for the school newspaper or bulletin or principal’s blog and an op-ed piece for the local newspaper.

 www.maryquattlebaum.com

In Pursuit of Civil Conversation

Guest Post by Mary Knight, 

author of Saving Wonder, winner of the 2017 Green Earth Book Award

As I’ve traveled to schools for author visits since the publication of my debut novel, Saving Wonder, teachers have been telling me how concerned they are about the divisive rhetoric their students are witnessing from our country’s leaders. 

In the spirit of encouraging the practice of civil conversation, I’ve created the following lesson, which invites students to activate their empathy as they see an issue from the “other’s” point of view. It also offers practice in close reading, as well as writing dialogue within a scene. I use Saving Wonder as a model text in this lesson, although I’m sure examples of civil dialogue exist in other novels as well.

In Saving Wonder, my protagonist Curley Hines has a conversation with the new coal boss (Mr. Tiverton) who is threatening to blow the top off his mountain through a devastating mining process called mountaintop removal. A lot is at stake for both characters, but they nevertheless have a civil (albeit passionate) conversation that allows each to express his point of view.

The following is an abbreviated lesson with a corresponding writing prompt. It assumes that students have at least read up to Chapter “P.” If you’d like an extended version with a fun, optional activity, please contact me through my message page at my website: www.maryknightbooks.com. I’d love to hear what you think and if you use the lesson, your results!

A Lesson on Civil Dialogue

Before engaging the lesson, explore the concept of “empathy” with your students. Say: One of the ways authors inspire readers to care is by writing with empathy. Does anyone know what empathy is? Empathy is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes, to see the world through another person’s eyes or point of view, or to imagine what another is feeling. You can empathize with someone who is feeling happy or sad or any other emotion. Invite students to think of examples from their own lives where they’ve empathized with another person or animal (pet).

Before reading and/or rereading Chapter “P,” pgs. 154-163, ask: Do you think Mr. Tiverton is a “bad guy” in this novel? Ask for a show of hands, yes and no. Then ask: Why do you think that? Be sure to remain neutral. After opinions have been expressed, invite your class to reread the following, saying: Let’s (re)read the following chapter and see what our thinking is then.

Read and/or reread the scene.

After reading: On a T-chart, title the page: “Red Hawk Mountain.” Under that, make two columns: one titled “Curley’s Viewpoint” and one titled “Mr. Tiverton’s Viewpoint.” Use a different color for each point of view. Ask students to first list what Curley thinks and feels about mining Red Hawk Mountain and the mountain itself, referring to the text as often as they like. Invite them to do this by “empathizing” with Curley, by putting themselves in his shoes.

After this feels complete, facilitate the same process with Mr. Tiverton. Be sure to invite students to step into the shoes of Mr. Tiverton. How does he see Red Hawk Mountain? What does he think and feel about the mining process? Again, invite students to refer to the text as often as they like.

After you’ve completed this exercise, ask again: So, who thinks Mr. Tiverton is a bad guy? Why or why not? It’s okay for students to still hold the opinion that he’s a bad guy. That’s not a wrong answer; it’s an opinion. Ask: Regardless of what we think of Mr. Tiverton, do you understand his viewpoint a little bit better after stepping into his shoes? When we empathize with someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we agree with them, right? Still, empathy can help us understand someone else’s viewpoint, an important skill in a world with lots of different perspectives.

Reader’s theater: If there’s time, “play out” this dialogue (pgs. 158-163) between the two perspectives through a Reader’s Theater activity, encouraging each actor to look at the chart and “step into the shoes” of his or her character, “seeing what he sees” and “feeling what he feels.” Encourage them to: “Read from the heart of your character—like you are passionate about everything you are saying!” Reading with empathy encourages fluency!

After Reader’s Theater, ask the actors: How did it feel to play your part? Is there anything more you understand about your character after speaking his words?

Ask the rest of your class: After watching and listening, do you feel any different about Mr. Tiverton now? In what ways does the author help us empathize with each of her characters?

Writing with empathy: Using the above dialogue scene as a model text, ask students to: Write a scene like the one we’ve just acted out, where you and a parent, a sibling, a teacher or a friend are having a conversation about something that means a lot to you . . . and the other person holds a different perspective or opinion than yours. Offer examples of family or school issues students might want to explore in their writing.   

Once students have decided on their “issue,” ask them to create a T-chart—two columns on a sheet of paper, one representing the writer / narrator’s viewpoint and the other column representing the viewpoint of the other character in their story. Encourage them to “step into the shoes” of each character and write down each character’s feelings as well as ideas and thoughts about this issue. 

Ask students to write at the bottom of this brainstorming page, where the conversation is taking place and when. After they’ve done this pre-writing activity, invite them to write a scene between themselves and another person using dialogue that explores two different points of view.

Bio: Saving Wonder is Mary’s debut novel, published in 2016 by Scholastic Press, and selected for numerous honors, including the Green Earth Book Award for Children’s Fiction, a Parents’ Choice award, and a Children’s Book Council Notable Book for Social Studies. Mary is also working on a professional development book called, CoreEmpathy: Transforming the Literacy Classroom, with her writing partner and literacy specialist, Christie McLean Kesler. www.CoreEmpathy.com