The aim of the HHLT Hudson Highlands Regional River of Words Program is to educate, collaborate, and celebrate the natural resources and scenic beauty of the Hudson Highlands with children throughout the region and instill a sense of the importance of stewardship in our youngest residents.
Find out more about HHLT's Hudson Highlands Regional River of Words Program
Introducing HHLT's lineup of workshops and multi-session series for the 2011-12 school year:
New ROW Programs - Our education team spent the summer developing new workshops based on teacher feedback and designed to meet state curriculum requirements in a fun, creative way. Take a look at what we offer...
Flit, Float, Frolic (Grades K-2) Frolic among the autumn leaves with your students. Collect, classify, and create with leaves. Each student picks a leaf dancer to name and draw. Find out what your leaf has to say about dropping from its tree. Then learn about classification by putting leaves into categories, and use them to create a woodland art project. This program can be part of a series with Babble, Bubble, Peep and Snuffle, Slink, Spy
Snuffle, Slink, Spy (Grades K-2) Discover the aromas, textures, and vistas of your surroundings. Students will be challenged to use their fine sense of smell on a sniffing trail, make a pretend tea, and participate in a group tea party. Student pairs will then seek out different textures on the trail and reconvene as a group at the feast of touches to unearth the correct tactile descriptors. The session will conclude with a "third eye" activity which affords them a new perspective of the natural world. This program can be part of a series with Babble, Bubble, Peep and Flit, Float, Frolic.
Journaling the Journey (Grades 2-5) Field journaling is a wonderful way to keep track of changes in your surroundings and growth in your students. In this program students learn quick sketching techniques, how to observe seasonal changes, and record weather data. Students use these observations to write short poems. Students are encouraged to regularly record observations, and feelings through sketching, data collection, and personal writing.
Event Mapping: Discovering a Sense of Place (K-6) Revive the senses and sharpen your observation skills through participation in the natural world! Using a nature journal, event mapping is the process of tracing and recording ones personal experience while moving through a landscape. You do not need to be an artist or writer to participate. The goal of this program is to observe, experience, and record ones personal encounter in the place and space around them. A group activity that is uniquely personal and requires participants to slow down, listen and observe; event mapping is appropriate for all grades and ability levels. Note: A modified version of this program, Collaborative Event Mapping, is also available and can be used as a team-building exercise.
Other ROW Programs -- We've made these existing student and teacher favorites available again, based on popular demand...
Babble, Bubble, Peep (Grades K-2)
Using rhythm games and nonsense words, we'll express our joy in sound and language. Then we'll listen to natural sounds and try to imitate them, and imagine sounds we don't ordinarily hear, such as voices of the rocks. The children will create and write down their own sounds inspired by pictures of 'Four-Leggeds, Rooties, Flyers, and Swimmers.' We finish with a rousing Sound Parade where the children march around joyfully making their nature sounds.
ROW Evening Post (Grades K-5) Imagine that you are the famous American artist, Norman Rockwell and you want to celebrate an aspect of the natural world for your next cover of the famed Saturday Evening Post. Take a stroll in your schoolyard with a naturalist, select features of the landscape and create sketches. Select the very best drawing for your Saturday edition cover and assign an inspirational title, and write a poem about something that you love in the landscape. This program can be adapted for the Kindergarten and First grades.
Follow the Drop (Grades 3-5) Water is that familiar and miraculous substance that can exist in all three states of matter. Pretend you are a drop of water traveling through the water cycle. Where would you go? How do you get there? Play "States of Matter Tag," and write a song or poem about an adventure a drop of water has in the water cycle.
Voices of Animals (Grades 4-5) Students write their own animal poems in the first person. They then choose to read their own poems to the class, or Irene will do so in a most entertaining way. This workshop stirs up a great deal of excitement for writing as well as reading. This program can be done indoors or outdoors.
How Does Water Get Dirty? (Grades 3-5) Explore how water gets dirty using the Enviroscape.. (a visual, interactive, model of a watershed where you can adjust the variables to show how pollution occurs) Discuss why it is so important to prevent water pollution, and use the Enviroscape to show how water pollution can be prevented. This program can be done indoors or outdoors.
ROW Program Series -- Want to delve deeper into a particular subject or skill set? ROW offers multi-session workshop series to fully satisfy specific curriculum requirements.
Five Senses Series: Babble, Bubble, Peep/ Flit, Float, Frolic/ Snuffle, Slink, Spy
Watershed Education Series: How does Water get Dirty?/ Follow the Drop/ Watershed hike
Nature Journal Series: Journaling the Journey/ Event Mapping
Poetry Intensive Series: (Grades 4-5) This series can be done indoors or outdoors. The Poetry Intensive is a series of three classes that plunges children more deeply into the satisfying process of writing poetry, with a focus on our connection to the Hudson River. Using a variety of exercises for our consecutive sessions, we explore:
Day 1: Introduction to Imagery -To increase student awareness of the world around them and the expressiveness of language.
Day 2: Strong Verbs -To intensify the power of any poem.
Day 3: Refrain and Echo -To give balance and structure to the poem and emphasize the main point.
.Programs fill quickly. Please contact us to guarantee your preferred dates.
For Teachers: go directly to some of our workshop descriptions flyers
HUDSON HIGHLANDS REGIONAL RIVER OF WORDS PROGRAM
HHLT launched the Hudson Highlands Regional River of Words Program in 2009, as part of an international poetry and art program created to promote literacy and environmental stewardship. HHLT’s regional version is designed to educate, collaborate, and celebrate the natural resources and scenic beauty of the Hudson Highlands through Hudson River watershed-inspired poetry created by fourth and fifth grade students at area schools.
River of Words (ROW) is an international poetry and art program created to promote literacy and environmental stewardship. Affiliated with the Library of Congress Center for the Book and co-founded by US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, ROW sponsors a free annual environmental poetry and art contest on the theme of watersheds, open to children ages 5 to 19. Since 1995, River of Words has trained teachers, park naturalists, grassroots groups, state resource agencies, librarians and others to incorporate observation-based nature exploration and the arts into their work with young people. In addition to helping improve children’s literacy—and cognitive skills like investigation and critical thinking—River of Words’ multidisciplinary, hands-on approach to education nurtures students’ creative voices as well, through instruction and practice in art and poetry.
HOW THE HHLT REGIONAL ROW PROGRAM WORKS
The Hudson Highlands Regional River of Words program uses the resources and materials of the national program to focus on our own watershed -- the Hudson River. The program consists of the following components:
- Annual regional program workshop(s) and in-district training sessions for educators, providing a foundation for incorporating this program seamlessly into existing curriculum.
- A variety of in-class student workshops and outdoor field study experiences conducted by our program team in collaboration with class teachers that educate on environmental science, poetry writing and local history and inspire students to participate by creating a body of work inspired by the Hudson River watershed.
- Culminating events including poetry readings and displays in community settings, the publication of a Hudson Highlands Regional River of Words anthology.
- A conduit for students to participate in ROW’s international contest.
GOALS & ELIGIBILITY
By developing and managing a regional River of Words program, HHLT hopes to bring this extraordinary program to the Hudson Highlands region, creating a collaborative connection between area school districts focusing on local environmental study. This program can provide a forum for students to connect with each other thoughtfully and creatively through a common theme: the Hudson River.
Launched as a pilot program beginning in the ’08-09 school year, the HHLT Regional ROW program will expand to a full scale program in the ’09-10 school year. Fourth and fifth grades in the following school districts are eligible to participate:
- Haldane
- Garrison
- Putnam Valley
- Cornwall
- Highland Falls/Fort Montgomery
For information on implementing the HHLT ROW program in your school, or to schedule workshops, please contact Lisa Mechaley, ROW Program Manager, at row@hhlt.org or 845-424-3358.
HHLT ROW Brochure
(154k pdf)
This program is made possible in part through the generous support of the Malcolm Gordon Charitable Trust, which was created to further the Open Space Institute’s environmental education programs and by a Land Trust Alliance New York State Conservation Partnership Community Catalyst Grant.