Nature Haiku

Description:

Essential Question: How can nature inspire my writing?

Overview: Students will connect with nature by taking photos of nature and writing a response to the photos. Lesson will end with two outstanding haiku.

Keywords: haiku, Japan, nature, movement, syllable, poetic device (simile).

Subject: ELA - English Language Arts

Age: 6th grade

Goals: 1) Students connect with nature. Students observe nature, then write about nature. 2) Students notice finer details about nature. 3) Students use observation details to create short poem.

Objectives: Students apprecite nature by studying and writing about it. 

Materials: note taking paper, camera (phone) or drwaing pad, Haiku definitions/rules.

Set up: This activity will come after a Haiku unit. Students will already understand the rules and methods of Haiku.

Class examples: 

1) Show students nature pictures. Ask them to study picture and write five details. 

2) Ask students to write a simile describing the picture.

3) Ask students to write the main points for possible Haiku: subject, season, movement.

4) Write a class Haiku for picture. 

5) Hand each student a picture of nature. Have each student go through the Haiku process. 

6) Use class camera or phone to take a new picture of nature. Repeat steps 1-4 as a class or with partners.

Student Assignment: Ask students to use a camera or phone when they go home. Go through the process of taking picture and writing poem twice on your own. Possibly try to relate photos to what students are doing in science class. 

At the end of poetry unit, students create a nature, poem book. They can print or draw the nature pictures that they took. Students can also just draw a picture of nature and not use an electronic device.

Assess: Poetry book (final project), single poems along the way. Possible student presentations. 

Hopefully by the end, students will appreciate the smaller details of nature. This unit will lead into a study of eco-sytems and how humans affect nature. What this lesson lacks is the importance of nature and how people affect nature. Hopefully, first, students can try to appreciate the beauty of nature, and then that will lead to the importance of nature.