Kara Mae Brown
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
Writing is a powerful tool for understanding and communicating about the natural world. In turn, the places that writing happens inform, influence, and shape the writing. As Madison Percy Jones writes, “writing emerges out of the reciprocal interaction of writers and the complex rhetorical ecologies. Place is more than content for writing; it constitutes the conditions for writing itself.” Indeed, as students write about and in place, they deepen their understanding of both the ecologies of rhetoric and the ecologies of places. For this activity, students engage with their natural surroundings to learn techniques for observation and naming. Ultimately, students will gain more knowledge about the natural world and communicate what they discover in their writing.