Writing About Nature

Content Objectives

The students participating in this curriculum unit will get the research I conducted independently and what has been gained from the seminar with Jill Campbell, "Writing About Nature." Learners will participate in writing assignments that include writing about nature juxtaposed with being in nature. Having their friends and family tell them stories about nature will lend itself to the unit in that while there are benefits to being in nature, literacy benefits come from storytelling. Hearne High School students' Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System or TELPAS scores revealed that writing was the area that needed the most improvement across the domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 

This unit will assist in improving the scores for that domain and using storytelling about nature to foster a love of literacy, writing, and nature itself. Denise E. Agosto states, "Most of the writing about the literacy benefits of storytelling in professional literature has been based on practical observations rather than research findings."⁷ While some could argue about the validity of the findings, as classroom teachers, we know that the data we collect from informal observations can be a treasure trove of information to serve our students better. The article further contends that storytelling helps students become better listeners and readers while building their vocabulary. As a teacher who teaches English as a Second Language, the importance of those skills is hugely impactful to those acquiring the English language, the very students under my tutelage.

Yale Art Historian Tim Barringer gave a talk that detailed the painting The Oxbow and the back-story of the artist Thomas Cole. What stood out most to me was that Thomas Cole grew up across the street from a foundry that made coal for steam engines, yet he is famous for his paintings about nature. What resonated most with me was learning about Cole's past, which helped to explain his choices of how or what was painted. How Cole grew up helped shape his view of the world and what he emulated in his art. Most notably, no one knows why exactly he did what he did because he did not leave a journal explaining his thought process. There, the idea was formed for my students to paint two renditions of what nature means to them and have them use the art of storytelling to explain how their art progressed from one painting to the next. 

Using their nature journals, virtual and actual sit-spots, familial interviews, and picture writings will inspire the change in their paintings from one to the other. In the book Earth Keeper, N. Scott Momaday writes of a story his father told him: "The night the old man Dragonfly came to my grandfather's house, the moon was full."⁸ Even though Momaday was not there, the detail his father put into telling him that story made him feel like he was. That poem is inspirational because when my students hear stories from their families, it will be as though they were there in that time and place too. Those poems will serve as inspiration for what the expectations of their journal writings will focus upon—putting as much detail into their entries as possible so that the reader will feel frozen at that moment with them. 

With nature journaling, one will ponder if it is being done correctly, and there is beauty in knowing that there is no right or wrong way necessarily, as poems follow a rule of their own entirely. Take, for instance, the poem be careful by Ed Roberson. The title does not have capital letters as in most titles in English and has unusual spacing in the lines of the one-stanza poem. The grammatical errors can be off-putting to English Language Arts teachers. However, the takeaway is that it is an element of control or that the poem is written to force the reader to engage in it in a certain way, as it disrupts the usual way of reading. This mode can be shown to students who still need to become proficient in English and encourage them to get their thoughts out of their heads and into their nature journals. Their journals will heavily impact the production of their artwork as they reflect upon what they wrote or illustrated from their sit-spots. 

Nature journaling is one piece of the puzzle, but storytelling is another facet. Denise Agosto says, "Most of the writing about the literacy benefits of storytelling in the professional literature has been based on observations from practice rather than research findings. Authors of these pieces typically suggest that storytelling helps children to become better listeners and better readers while building vocabulary."⁹ As students interview their family members and listen to others' stories about their experiences with nature, they can be provided follow-up questions related to comprehension and reflection, including: How do you think they felt during this time? What do you think caused them to feel this way? Could you imagine yourself in their shoes? According to the article, those questions encourage critical thinking and ongoing cognitive engagement, skills students learning another language benefit significantly from.