Learning about plant species through lyrical texts

Abstract

This video essay explores how lyrical language can serve as a gateway to teaching children about biodiversity and raising their awareness of the ongoing environmental crisis. The starting point is a hypothesis that poetry can offer a forgotten language for what we are on the verge of losing. The central question is how nature poetry can create an emotional connection to the natural world and help children understand the value of species at risk of extinction. The text material consists of six poems by Norwegian poets, which children aged 12 and 15 in the project read aloud. The children also reflect on their experiences with the poetry readings. The film recordings of plants and flowers were made in a cultural landscape, and the video essay also includes plant illustrations and the children's own drawings of the flowers as visual material. The project demonstrates that nature poetry and lyrical language can enhance children's understanding of nature and their learning of species names through a personal and emotional connection. This can further lead to Emmanuel Lévinas' idea of an ethical responsibility in encountering the "face of the other" in all living beings. Methodologically, the essay draws on Christian Keathley's perspectives on how personal involvement and subjective, emotional aspects can bring an additional dimension to research, thus enriching the understanding of a field of study. The video essay has connections to other contributions in this publication, such as Music and Place by Tatjana Kielland Samoilow and The Most Beautiful Sea by Evelyn Kreutzer. The video essay has a didactic aim, with the purpose of demonstrating how language and literature can be used to enhance children's knowledge of nature and contribute to awareness about sustainable development.