Natures Balm

Learning Intention:

I am learning to connect emotions with word choices and text structures so that I can understand how emotion is conveyed in a text.

 

Success Criteria:

• I can engage in discussions about emotions and texts
• I can infer meaning and identify examples in a text
• I can identify different levels of meaning relating to emotions
• I can compose a poem conveying my chosen emotions.

Essential knowledge:

Teaching resources relating to literary devices can be found in the NSW Department of Education curriculum resource, Literary devices Stage 2.

 

Oral language and communication:

Before reading the poem, engage students in a whole class discussion. Ask the following questions.

• When someone is feeling stressed or tense, what might their body language look like? (Clenched fist, shouting, fast movements, frowning face)

You may like to ask for a volunteer from the class to role-play this feeling.

• What kinds of words do you connect with the feeling of being stressed or tense? (Worried, angry, nervous, upset, negative, loud noises)
• When someone is feeling relaxed and calm, what might that look like? (Still, slow, closed eyes, relaxed muscles, yoga, smile)

You might like to ask for a volunteer from the class to role-play this feeling.

• What kinds of words do you connect with the feeling of being calm and relaxed (Gentle, sleepy, positive, happy, enjoyable, pleasant, slow, still)
• If you were feeling stressed or tense, what might you do to help you calm down?

 

Play an alternative version of ‘Captains Coming’ with the class. Have students stand up (perhaps in an outdoor learning area) and use the following prompts:

• Stress is coming – students squat down with arms over their heads and duck for cover
• Feeling calm – students move slowly using a yoga or tai chi movement of teacher’s choice
• Feeling cross – students stomp and frown
• Feeling happy – students skip and smile.

 

Understanding text:

 

Read the poem together as a class. Before discussing the poem ask students to write down the answers to the following two questions (no sharing yet).

• What emotion is shown in the first three lines of the poem? How do you know?
• What emotion is shown in the last three lines of the poem? How do you know?
• What happens in the poem to cause the change?

When these questions have been answered, have students work in a small group and compare their answers. Students can refine their answers as a group.

 

Table groups report back to the class. (Responses from students should include in the first three lines the emotion is that of being stressed or overwhelmed. The words thundering and thrashing show this. In the final lines the feeling is calm and peaceful. The rhyming words calm, and balm show this. The change happens because of spending time at the beach seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting nature.)

 

Explain to students that the poem is structured with the beginning and the ending conveying different emotions as a result of the action in the middle section of the poem. This is shown through sensory writing, in which the poet refers to the different senses – in this poem – sight, sound, taste and touch.

 

Have students use four different coloured highlighters to highlight an example for each of the following (suggested answers in brackets):

Sight (Waves crashing)

Sound (shushing, hushing)

Taste (Salt spray on my tongue)

Touch (Sunshine warms my skin)

 

Creating text:

Have students work in a small group, using a large sheet of paper. Ask them to list as many emotions as possible.

 

Encourage students to think about different levels of meaning. Give the example that somebody could feel annoyed, then the feeling might become stronger, and they might feel angry and then the feeling might become even stronger, and they become furious.

 

Students now choose two very different emotions from the group brainstorm. Students complete the table below. An example is provided.

	Emotion 1: Nervous	Emotion 2: Delighted
Looks like	Shaking fingers	Skipping, hopping
Sounds like	Heavy breathing	Laughter and giggles
Feels like	Tense muscles	Warmth and sunshine
Tastes like	Sour	Fairy bread

 

Using ‘Natures Balm’ as a model, ask students to use the emotions in the above table to write a short poem which begins with the first emotion and ends with the second emotion. They do not have to use every idea from the table above, they can choose the ideas they like that work with the poem.

 

An example is provided below:

 

Shaking fingers

Reach for the door.

First clenched.

Heavy breaths.

Knock knock knock

Someone’s skipping,

Running, hopping.

Giggles and laughter -

Feeling better

Fairy bread for one and all!

 

Assessment for/as learning:

 

Ask students to self-reflect on their own written composition using the success criteria and allocating a ranking of 1-5 on how well they controlled these success criteria.

• I can engage in discussions about emotions and texts
• I can infer meaning and identify examples in a text
• I can identify different levels of meaning relating to emotions

Ask children to list which emotions they aimed to convey. Using a highlighter, ask children to highlight and annotate where they have successfully inferred these emotions, before finally ranking themselves 1-5 on this criteria item.

• I can compose a poem conveying my chosen emotions and identify where and how I achieved this in my poem.