The ‘Black Hole Poetry’ workshop was created by Dr Sadie Jones after being inspired by the ‘Poetic Science’ event she took part in as part of Southampton Science and Engineering Festival (SOTSEF) in March 2021.
The workshops are designed to engage students aged 9-13 (years 5-8 in UK schools) with the Black Hole Physics research of the University of Southampton astronomy group, to read more about the research click here.
The first lesson involves students making found poetry from text at year 5/6 level and in the second workshop the students can either write their own short poem based on what they have learned across the two workshops or they can make another found poem from the research blurb written by Dr Sadie Jones and Prof Ian McHardy.
A collection of Found Poems and original Black Hole (BH) poems written as part of the project can be found on this website.
Black Hole Found Poetry: Lesson 1 of 2
For Year 5/6: Space Curriculum
Workshop created by Sadie Jones (SJ) on 19/10/21
Learning Objectives
- Students will learn what black holes are, how astronomers learn about them and about the two different types of black holes (binary and supermassive) that astronomers look at. This learning will be assessed in lesson 2 using a kahoot quiz.
- The students will also be given an introduction on what a found poem and how to make one from the text they will be given. The poems the students produce will be evidence of them learning what a found poetry is.
- Students will learn that scientists can still be creative people and meet a female astrophysicist/scientist who is an expert in black holes who loves being creative.
Lesson Plan – Total 1hour 10mins (70 minutes+)
- SJ presents powerpoint about black holes and what found poems are -20 minutes
- Print-outs of the following 3 pages of this document printed single sided given out and each student needs to have highlighters, pritt sticks and scissors and black card to stick on. – 10 minutes
- Student make their own found poems and give them a title– 20 minutes
- Volunteers to read out their poems in front of the class -10 minutes
- Q&A about space and black holes – 10 minutes (depending on how much time left)
Text for Found Poems from these sources below:
Print out the following four pages and give to the students at random
1.ESA kids Black Hole page
https://www.esa.int/kids/en/learn/Our_Universe/Story_of_the_Universe/Black_Holes
2.Transcript on the Space NASA page
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/black-holes/en/
3.National geographics kids page
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/space/article/black-holes