science series I

In November at the NCTE Convention I'll be participating in a Children's Literature Assembly Master Class called "Poetry Across the Curriculum."  I'll lead a Roundtable discussion about how poetry can support science teaching, while others address math, social studies, art and P.E..  To get myself all geared up and to provide a resource for participants, I'm going to start now on collecting and commenting on some of my favorite science poems.

For this season I love this one, a sensory feast from the queen of close observation, Valerie Worth.

pumpkin | Valerie Worth

After its lid

is cut, the slick

Seeds and stuck

Wet strings

Scooped out,

walls scraped

Dry and white,

Face carved, candle

Fixed and lit,

Light creeps

into the thick

Rind: giving

That dead orange

Vegetable skull

Warm skin, making

A live head

To hold its

Sharp gold grin.

from More Small Poems (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1976)

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Besides the festival of hard c and k sounds and the incitement of repeated long and short i's, Valerie gives us wonderful contrasts:  slick and stuck, wet and dry, white and orange, dead and alive.  Also there is the transformation that I hope every child has the hands-on chance to effect, from farm-field vegetable to human artifact (which makes this a social studies poem as well!).  Stop painting and get carving while you talk about change with K-2nd graders.

A nonfiction text to place alongside this poem is the skillfully poetic Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson and Shmuel Thaler (Random House Children's Books, 1999).  It's the best way I know to introduce the concept of plant life cycles to young children.

Join the poetry party this Friday at The Miss Rumphius Effect with Tricia!