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poetry: grades 8-12 activity ideas
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The Observer: The Science of Vision and Poetry
Writing a poem is discovery.
--Robert Frost
Inner feeling and objective perception mingle in poetry. Part of the joy of building poems lies in the structuring of details and observations. Before building a structure of meaning with these details, the acuity and depth of observation must be sharp in order to supply perception. Additionally, questions need to be established. What is real? How do we perceive our surroundings? How do we see?
Activity: Ask students how many of them have seen a blackbird. Ask them how many of them can describe what they have seen? Allow several students to offer descriptions. Allow class discussion of accuracy to develop. Permit multiple descriptions and encourage precision and development of descriptive language as students offer possibilities.
Indicate to students that the poet Wallace Stevens wrote a poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Does being able to look at a blackbird in this many ways surprise them? Why or why not?
Ask students: How does the eye see? Go on the Internet to the 3D Brain Anatomy section of the PBS Web site "The Secret Life of the Brain". Use the 3D anatomy animation as well as the accompanying blurb to discuss visual processing.
Then, go to the Mind Illusions segment of the PBS Web site, "The Secret Life of the Brain." Continue on to establish that "vision has only partly to do with the retina, lens, and cornea. Understanding what we see mostly happens in the brain, which is why a person with perfect vision is still susceptible to optical illusions."
Use the PBS Mind Illusions animations to allow students to "experience" optical illusion and to discuss what "feedback" to the brain might affect images. Specifically, use the Color Study section of Mind Illusions on the PBS web site to establish that the "human mind recognizes 7.5 million colors."
Shift back to how a poet develops description from sharp, accurate detailing.
- What does the poet add and how?
- Ask students to suggest similes, such as black as night, dark as liquid tar, like a moonless night.
- How might a poet describe black?
- How might a poet describe a blackbird?
Ask students to read Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Ask students to think carefully about the "image" of their personal image of a "blackbird." Then, ask them to go to http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/pictlist.html and see if they can find a bird picture that matches that mental image. Some will succeed, and some will discover that their mental "images" are not sharp enough to permit a match.
Assignment: Ask students to add two, personal stanzas to Wallace Stevens' poem and make it "Fifteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Ask that at least one stanza offer a conscious understanding of at least one detail of visual processing or a factor that affects human visualization. The student should be able to explain that factor or detail.
Follow-up: Have students share their new stanzas to Wallace Stevens' poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Have each student share the conscious visual processing or affective factor that was incorporated into at least one of the original stanzas.
Extended Activity:
What is the color of the wind?
--Zen koan
Have each student find or create a visual reflection of at least one of the following: a stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem, the original stanza of a peer, the scientific process of visual imaging, or a factor affecting human visualization. The students may elect to draw original material, make charts, create digital images, create a PowerPoint, or find and collect images.
Create a class-illustrated "Many Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Dependent upon class response, the class representation of understanding may be hybrid of electronic and physical materials.
I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.
--M.C. Escher
While the fields of mathematics and poetry may seem to be distinctly separate pursuits, they have much in common. Both are born of desires to accurately describe the world. Both try to condense language to communicate more succinctly. Both are capable of describing events. However, they do so from drastically different perspectives.
Let children explore these two different perspectives side by side. See how they interact, how they interfere, and how they can improve when seemingly disparate perspectives are put together. And, give your students their own chances to "make fun of gravity."
Activity: Drop a book. A heavy book that makes a loud noise will work best. Drop the book from about 3 feet high so the equations below work out.
Divide the class into pairs. One member of each pair will describe the event using words. The other member of each pair will describe the event using numbers.
Have students who are using words write a brief (1 or 2 paragraphs) description of the event. Guide them toward using figurative language and specific language.
- Encourage them to create metaphors for the plummeting book or the loud, shocking sound it made when it hit the ground.
- Assist students in reflecting upon descriptive words or phrases that could be utilized to describe the event.
- Encourage students to consider adding onomatopoeia words that suit the sound.
- Have students create and consider simile phrases to describe the event.
The other students should find numerical means to describe the event. Have them describe the book using measurements of weight, length, and volume. Have them describe how the book fell using time (about 0.3 seconds) and distance measurements.
Another possible mathematical expression is to use an equation for distance traveled.
Distance traveled = starting velocity * time traveled + acceleration * time traveled * time traveled.
If the book was dropped from 3 feet, this should lead them to the equation (with 9.81 ft/sec/sec being the acceleration of gravity):
3 ft = 0 ft/sec * 0.3 sec + 9.81 ft/sec/sec * 0.3 sec * 0.3 sec
or
3 ft = 9.81 ft/sec/sec * 0.3 sec * 0.3 sec
Other students may wish to make a line graph showing the position of the book at various points in time. Additionally, students should describe the sound made by the falling book. Have them use a decibel chart to describe the volume of the sound.
Assignment: Once both groups have described the falling book, have each pair get together and read their partner's description. Have them discuss which description is more accurate, which is more descriptive, which is easier to understand. Have them talk about when each of them would be appropriate.
Collaboratively, have students combine their two descriptions into a poem. Can they seamlessly juxtapose the two descriptions or are the two ways of communicating too different, too opposed?
How can they mix the seemingly disparate ideas of metaphor and mathematical description into a poem? Encourage students to consider how they might provide a bridge of union. Encourage experimentation. Is a new stanza needed? Might an image provide a strong bridge? For those students who made graphs, how can those fit into a poem? Suggest concrete poetry, creating verses at each plot point.
Have each partnered pair of students decide on the method of presentation appropriate for that partnered pair's individual Math/Poetry combination. Some pairs will elect graphic format, others will type out word documents, others may use presentation software, and others may elect a hybrid demonstration of their math/poetry products.
Follow-up: As at the beginning of the lesson, drop a book or have a student drop a book. Let that serve as an opening introduction to the readings or performances of the math/poetry pieces of volunteer pairs of students.
The Poetic Science of Laughter
Emotions are the intangible and vaporous qualities that many presume them to be. Brain systems work together to give us emotions just as they do with sight and smell. If you lose the ability to feel, your life and the lives of the people around you, can be devastated.
--Antonio R. Damasio
There is no true formula for what makes a person laugh. What one person finds funny, another may find vulgar, trite, or dull. Even when people agree that something is funny, the reason behind the humor is often quite different. However, any comedian will tell you that the surest way to get a room full of people to chuckle is first to spend as much time as possible refining jokes, perfecting timing, and choosing just the right words for the job, a process much like the craft of poetry.
Activity: Write the term "infectious laughter" on the board. Ask students if they feel there is such a thing. Why or why not? Ask students to describe what happens when they laugh. Tell them to be objective. What do the lips do? How do the eyes react? What sounds are heard?
Ask students to indicate what they believe causes laughter. Does laughter have importance to human beings? Why or why not?
Go to the PBS Web site, "The Secret Life of the Brain" to the segment on the adult brain and feeling for the feature on human laughter. Examine and discuss with the students the physiological aspects of feeling and laughter.
Go to PBS' Scientific American Frontiers Web site for Q&A with Robert R. Provine, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Maryland, who studied the instinctive, contagious acts of yawning and laughing to gain insights into the neural mechanisms of human social behavior.
Assignment:
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes.
--Dylan Thomas
Ask students if poetry or word play can be funny. Ask them to give examples, if they can, to support their answers.
Introduce or review the highly structured poetry form, the limerick, that is designed to be humorous. To assist students in understanding the formulaic structure of limericks, go to this Web site designed to provide help in limerick writing: http://vtvt.essortment.com/limerickpoetry_nug.htm.
Ask students to work together to write limericks. They should follow the limerick formula while addressing purpose and audience. ONLY when a limerick has produced laughter, visible and audible, when read aloud to another group should the limerick be considered successful. To maximize the chances of "success" on the read-aloud test, students should recall and employ the scientific, neuroscience information they have just explored to add to the instinctive, contagious nature of laughter.
The Lure of Flight: History, Science, and Poetry
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
--Ursula K. LeGuin
The lure of flying has fascinated man and drawn him from his earthbound status to the stars. From wondering at the seemingly magical, flying ability of birds, man has traversed to a scientific understanding of the dynamics of flight and the mechanisms capable of carrying him through the air and into vastness of space.
Activity: On the PBS Scientific American Frontiers site, "Flying Free," explore with your students the historical milestones in human flight utilizing the interactive timeline. Then, utilizing inventor Paul MacCready's diagrams on the site, construct a monoplane glider.
Next, have students take gliders out for a "test flight." Explore their abilities to fly through straight-forward, gentle hand propulsion as well as with spin put on about the axis.
Imagine ahead to the proposed 2007 Mars "Kitty Hawk Glider Mission to Valles Marineris," where a small fleet of gliders might "give scientists a bird's eye view of the huge Valles Marineris canyon at the Martian equator. For more information, visit the Mars Flyer Web feature.
To enter the experiences of one man linked closely to nature and flight, view the PBS Web site "A Falconer's Memoirs" and examine the section on the "fastest animal on earth," the peregrine falcon.
Examine the science of vertebrate flight at: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/birdintro.html and http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/aves.html.
Examine the famous painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel and find Icarus in the painting. Then read W.H. Auden's poem, "Musée des Beaux Arts". Discuss how Auden references the myth of the flight of Daedalus and Icarus in that poem as well as Bruegel's painting. Although Daedalus succeeds in his challenge of flight, young Icarus does not survive. Challenges and success can demand intense sacrifice.
Ask students if they know of examples, personal or historical, where success and the challenge of "soaring high" were demanding and difficult. What human factors are involved?
Assignment:
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps have never been seen.
--Robert Bresson, French film director
Ask students to write an original poem about "Flying Free," examining any facet of its challenge, its lure, its science, its sacrifice, and/or its meaning.
Published: February 2002