Using Orion in the ELL Classroom: Resources for Exploring Nature, Culture, and Place Beth A. Russell Oregon State University

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About Orion Magazine “Founded in 1982, Orion is published bi-monthly by the Orion society. It is the foremost magazine for the publication of the highest quality creative nonfiction, fiction, narrative journalism, and poetry dedicated to nature and the environment. Through writing and art that explore the connection between nature and culture, Orion inspires new thinking about how humanity might live on Earth justly, sustainably, and joyously.”

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Contributing Editors/Advisors Include

Wendell Berry, Jane Goodall, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan, Pramila Jayapal, Winona LaDuke, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, W.S. Merwin, Gary Paul Nabhan, Michael Pollan, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Snyder, Sandra Steingraber, Luis Alberto Urrea, Terry Tempest Williams, and Edward O. Wilson.

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The January/February 2014 Issue included:

Essays: “The Great Rewilding,” “Walking on Mars,” “Greening Greensburg,” “The

Happiness Index,”

Short Fiction: “Mountains Without Number,”

“Letters from Two Gardens,” an epistilatory exchange between poets

Ross Gay and Amy Nezhukumatathil

Poems by Ursula K. LeGuin and Andrea Cohen

Feature Articles by regular contributors Hanks Lentfer, Anthony Doerr, Sandra Steingraber, Justin Hocking, Jourdan Imani Keith, and Tamar Adler

Reviews of Books, Films and the Arts

Reader Contributions: The Place Where You Live

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Other Resources: The Orion Society Website

Full text of selected articles from current and previous issues. Free for fair use upon request.

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The Orion Society website also features the following free for

fair use Audio and Video resources:

o Author Interviews o Author Readings o Live Web Events o Event Audio o Narrated Slide Shows o Orion Editors Outloud o Slide Shows o Video

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The Orion Reader’s Series “The Orion Reader Series collects landmark Orion essays into thematic volumes

for easy reading and portability. Ideal for reading groups and academic course adoption, each volume is accompanied by a downloadable reader’s guide consisting of key discussion questions.” Titles in this Series Include:

Animals & People: A Selection of Essays from Orion Magazine. Foreword by Jane Goodall. Paperback, 134 pages, $12. Leave No Child Inside: A Selection of Essays from Orion Magazine Paperback, 152 pages, $12. Change Everything Now: A Selection of Essays from Orion Magazine Edited and introduced by Jennifer Sahn, editor of Orion. Paperback, 105 pages, $12. Thirty-Year Plan: Thirty Writers on What We Need to Build a Better Future Edited and introduced by Jennifer Sahn, editor of Orion. Paperback, 105 pages, $12. Wonder and Other Survival Skills: A Selection of Essays from Orion Magazine Edited and introduced by H. Emerson Blake, editor-in-chief of Orion. Paperback, 107 pages, $12.

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The Orion Anthologies

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The Nature Literacy Series

The books in Orion‘s Nature Literacy Series, developed in collaboration with hundreds of teachers across the U.S. and Canada and designed to help educators

connect children and nature, are widely used by educators and parents, both in the classroom and out. In addition to purchasing the titles individually, you may also

purchase the three-book set.

Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education By David Sobel. Paperback, 45 pages, $12.00

Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Learning

By Claire Walker Leslie, John Tallmadge, & Tom Wessels, with an introduction by Ann Zwinger. Paperback, 83 pages,

$12.00

Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities By David Sobel. Paperback,105 pages, $12.00

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Using Orion in the ELL Classroom

With special thanks to Micheal Witbeck, Gary Hewitt, Byrne Brewerton, Elena Pipenko, Lise Hull, Denise Egri, Cathy Becker, Richard Hahn, Isobella Ireland, and Anne Lindenfeld, colleagues who inspired, collaborated on, or piloted the use of these materials in the classroom. 10 of 20

Teaching Vocabulary/Leveling Materials Copy the full text of an article from the website.

Download the full text of the article into Lextutor at: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/

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Teaching Vocabulary/Leveling Materials Lextutor indexes the K1, K2, Academic Word List and Off List vocabulary content of the text:

Lextutor provides color coded K1,K2, AWL and OL Vocabulary Lists:

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Teaching Parts of Speech Read the poem below. Identify the part of speech of each underlined word or group of words. Then, discuss the poem with your partner.

The Fog Town School of Thought They should have taught us birds and trees 1._____________________ in school, they should have taught us beauty 2._____________________ and weaving bees and had a class 3._____________________ on listening and standing alone— 4._____________________ the children should have studied light 5._____________________ reflected from a spider web, 6._____________________ we should have learned the branches of streams 7._____________________ spread out like fingers or the veins 8._____________________ of a leaf—we should have learned the sky 9._____________________ is the tallest steeple, we should have known 10.____________________ a hill is a voice inside the sky— 11.____________________ O, we should have had our school 12.____________________ on top and stayed until the night 13.____________________ for the fog to bloom in the hollows and rise 14.____________________ like cotton spinning off a wheel— 15.____________________ we should have learned a dream—a child’s 16.____________________ and even still a man’s—is made 17.____________________ from fog and love, my word, you’d think 18.____________________ with the book in front of us we should 19.____________________ have learned how Fog Town got its name. 20.____________________ - Maurice Manning

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Teaching Sentence Grammar Use a complex sentence to describe the action being performed in each image using the vocabulary and verb tense indicated in parenthesis above the photo.

(she/jump/because: past progressive/past perfect).

(They/fly/if: future perfect/present perfect)

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Teaching Active Listening:

1. Go to http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/audio-video/item/hank_lentfer_reads_from_his_september_october_coda/ 2. Listen to the audio recording. 3. Follow along on the printed handout. 4. Listen to the audio excerpt again. 5. This time, circle key nouns and underline key verbs and verb phrases. 6. Listen to the audio excerpt again. This time, highlight key signal and transition words. 7. Discuss the audio essay with your group or partner:

A. What is the topic? B. What is the main idea? C. What facts, reasons, statistics or examples does the speaker use to support his assertions?

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Orion for Assessment Level 5 Academic English Reading Diagnostic Text: “Compassion,” by Marc Bekoff. Thirty Year Plan. Orion, 2012. Read the article assigned to you. Take active reading notes. Use complete sentences to answer the questions that follow. If you quote material from the text, be sure to use quotation marks and remember to include APA style parenthetical documentation of your source. You will have the duration of the class period to complete this assignment. Active Reading Scores: _____Keywords ______Key Phrases ______Margin Notes Who is the author of this article? (1 sentence) Who published this article? (1 sentence) When was it published? (1 sentence) What is the implied main idea of paragraph 1? (1 sentence) What 3 specific examples does the author use to support the implied main idea? What is the explicit main idea of paragraph 2? In paragraph 4, how does the author define compassion? (1 Sentence). Paraphrase paragraph 4 below: (2-3 sentences) What is the author’s tone in paragraph 5? How do you know? (1-2 sentences) What is the author’s purpose in writing this article? How do you know? (1-2 sentences) In this article, what is the author’s thesis? (1 sentence) Is the thesis directly stated or implied? (1 sentence) Do you agree with the thesis? Why or why not? Please use specific examples from the text to support your answer. (3-5 sentences)

(Note: Each question is directly aligned with a single course objective, highlighted in bold).

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Teaching Critical Reading Extensive Reading Response Assignments

Extensive Reading Response 1: Due Monday, Week 3 (10/14) 1. Choose three articles from Thirty Year Plan. 2. Read each article. Take active reading notes. 3. For each article you read, write a short paragraph in which you answer all of the following questions: What is the title of the article. Who wrote the article? When was the article published? What is the topic of the article? What is the author’s main idea? Example Paragraph: In “Peasant Bounty,” published in the July/August 2011 issue of Orion Magazine, Bear Guerra writes about “food sovereignty” in Haiti. His main idea is that it is environmentally and economically important for developing countries to produce their own food, rather than importing it. 3. After writing your three paragraphs, please bold the paragraph describing the source that interests you most. Be prepared to discuss in class why this article was the most interesting to you. Be sure to write three paragraphs, each about a different article. Be sure to use a variety of sentence types (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) in each paragraph. Check to make sure that every sentence has a subject and a predicate before posting your response to Blackboard.

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Teaching Critical Research Writing: IEPA: 050 Academic Reading and Writing Persuasive Research Essay Explanation: For this assignment, working as a member of a research cohort, you will use the online resources at the Valley Library to find four academic articles related to a topic you have chosen in answer to the following question: What one thing is humanity increasingly going to need in order build a better future, one with more possibilities rather than fewer? (Thirty Year Plan ix) After carefully reading the articles and taking active reading notes, you will write a persuasive research essay that answers the question above. Your essay should persuade, inform and entertain your audience.

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Student Writing Samples

Introduction The earth is metaphorically referred as a kind mother; all human beings on the earth are her babies. Economically speaking, if we regard the baby as an asset of a mother, our mother is wealthy. But, when consumption is boundless and resources are limited, these assets may turn into the liabilities. This is the exact situation we are facing. The growing population causes a series of problems, such as environmental pollution and misdistribution of social wealth. The earth cannot sustain us anymore. Many measures are taken to control population. But in my opinion, just like people use a faucet to regulate the yield of water, educating women can be the only way to control the population. We have gone through the technological revolutions; people today are facing more complicated situation than before. If we want to survive and to have a better life and future, we need more to be concerned about the quality of the population than the number of the population.

Conclusion To conclude, women’s education helps solve the population issue by both curbing the number of children women bear and improving the quality of the population. I’m glad to see that many countries are paying attention to women’s education. As a result, there are more and more schools for girls, and more and more girls come to school to receive education. A wise person knows that girls are our future. My dear reader, do you believe that teaching women builds the future? Do you understand how important our future mothers are?

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Subscriptions and Purchasing Subscription Rates

Paper

1 Year/6 Issues: $35.00 2 Years/12 Issues: $59.00 3 Years/18 Issues: $79.00

Digital

1 Year/6 Digital Issues: $19.00

Orion’s institutional subscription and purchase rates vary according to order volume. Orion Readers and Orion Anthologies are available at a substantial discount

when purchased in bulk for program use.

For more details on Orion for Educators, visit http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/education/

or contact:

Orion Outreach Coordinator Erik Hoffner ehoffner@orionmagazine.org

413-528-4422 Questions about implementing the materials presented in this PechaKucha

Should be directed to Beth Russell: beth.russell@oregonstate.edu

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