Second graders experienced an unexpected but important life lesson on their recent visit to the Forest Program on Friends Academy’s 65-acre campus.
The primary reason for going outdoors? Students were asked to use their five senses on a walk through the woods and explore nature through the lens of a scientist — observe, think, make connections — then return to the classroom with their field notes and write a poem about their findings.
“The goal is to integrate the science curriculum and literacy,” says Mrs. Katie Schlicht, the Lower School’s Science teacher. “A scientist is someone who can explain things in nature and the phenomena that happens.”
“And a poet,” says Mrs. Paige Atwood, a second grade teacher who graduated from Friends Academy in 2012, “is someone who observes and makes connections. Combining science and poetry is more about displaying your thoughts rather than finding a conclusion.”
As for that important life lesson?
Well, kids, you don’t have to use all of your senses all of the time.
“Don’t touch it!”
That was the directive from Mrs. Schlicht, Mrs. Atwood, and Mrs. Sara Weinstein, another second grade teacher, after one student proudly exclaimed, “Hey, over here! I found deer poop!”
Everyone rushed over to see it scattered about a patch of mushrooms.
“Don’t touch the mushrooms!” the teachers added. “And don’t eat them either!”
Nonetheless, one student wrote in his poem about touching the mushrooms — fear not, teachers saw it happen and made sure he washed his hands — while three others penned their close-ups of the aforementioned deer poop.
But deer aren’t the only animals to call these woods home.
Students wrote about seeing bunnies hopping and worms crawling. They heard birds with white bellies chirping and crickets clattering against a backdrop of green grass blowing left and right while red, yellow and orange leaves kept falling from trees.
They felt the contours of bumpy rocks, hard branches, rotten branches, and crunchy leaves. They smelled fresh air, pollen, grass, and flowers.
Though no food was served, they made the leap and connected this autumn tableau to the tastes of apple pie, pumpkin muffins, brownies, cookies, apple cider, and Halloween candy.
“The more you can connect things, the more it sticks with the children,” Mrs. Weinstein says. “Science is science, but there’s poetry in it — and there’s writing in everything that we do.”
The reason both second-grade classes went outdoors together?
“It’s so important for the children to see adults working together,” Mrs. Weinstein says of her relationship with Mrs. Atwood. “As teachers, we want the children to feel like they can come to either one of us. And then that carries over to other areas as well and helps them realize everything is connected.”
Adds Mrs. Atwood: “We make it a point to connect everything that we're doing to either the world or their lives, or another subject, or another class. We have one student who wants to be a fashion designer. She’s mentioned it a million times. We’re not doing geometry yet, but she was showing us a dress she made, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool how you used a triangle here.’ It became a whole geometry lesson and she was like, ‘I didn’t know there was so much math in clothes!’ There are these connections all the time.”
Second graders will dive into their full poetry unit in the spring, but introducing it in the fall is a way for the teachers to encourage creativity while helping students start to build other important skills.
“Poetry, especially at this age, is a non-threatening thing because poems don't have to be super long,” Mrs. Weinstein says. “And we’ll often have the kids read their poems out loud. So you’re getting that aspect where children are standing up and presenting in a judgment-free zone.
“One of the things I always say about Friends Academy is that the children who graduate from here are amazing public speakers. When they're younger, they all learn to stand in front of a room and feel confident.”
Even if — or precisely because — they get to talk about discovering deer poop.
Photography by Alvin Caal / Friends Academy