Nature Connection and Language Arts

Hello Everyone,

As we continue our unit on the Nature Connection, here is a summary of what we are doing for Language Arts, which is intertwined into all of our activities:

• Latin Words: To better understand our discussions around taxonomy and the classification of animals in science, we are studying Latin prefixes and suffixes, which are often used in scientific terms. They are also useful for gleaning the meaning of words we don’t know, as Latin is the root of the English language. There are tasks in each student’s binder, and we will do these as we have time until the end of the year. Students also have a handout on Homographs that we will handle in the same way. These learning activities are ongoing until end very end of June, and I will do checks in class to see they are coming along.
• Descriptive and Figurative Language: As we go outside for our walks and discuss our connection to nature, we are working on being descriptive with our vocabulary. In class, we have done some exercises in our journal to begin this journey. We will practice giving active voice to the things around us in nature, even the things that are not alive, through the use of personification. We will discuss metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, and other figurative language tools we can use to describe things more vividly for the reader.
• Poetry: Students will practice making haikus, cinquains, free verse, and other short forms of poetry, which also reading nature poetry available in a large selection of books in the classroom. We will be making a small journal of our favourites and presenting one to the class. Details to come in a later post.
• Skeleton Tree: We will be discussing how one can survive in nature, and the relationship between people and the land, through the novel Skeleton Tree. Students will use the Question, Answer, Response method as we read, which encourages them to think of deeper questions and to notice details while reading. We will do this together as a group, then students will produce a brief e-port book report.

More details to come about the specific assignment details and due dates. This is just a summary of what we are doing.

I encourage everyone to please keep journal entries neat for their poetry entries, which will make creating your journal easier, so you can find the poems you have made.

I also suggest keeping up with poetry assignments, as we may have one each day. If you need to take it home and finish, it can be homework to make sure your poem is complete, so that the next day we can move on to new work.

Thank you,

Ms. D