#sendaihaiku Personal student responses to the Japanese tsunami

Categories: Environmental hazards, writing & assessment, Other
I have been poring through some S2 tsunami haikus. I had shown the class an example haiku below;

When the buildings sway
The victory of structure
is lost in the wave

This was to introduce the structure of a haiku, but also to set the tone that I was looking for. I wasn't really thinking 'geography' at all, just looking for a personal response to human tragedy. I think it's fair to say that summarising such a massive impact event was something that, unsurprisingly, a number of 12 to 13 year old students found too challenging, but some students wrote very powerful haikus, something emboldened by the brevity of the response in my opinion. I am very proud of the students thoughtful approach above and would encourage other schools and practitioners to submit their own classes contributions via the twitter hashtag. We offer nothing yet more than our thoughts and prayers and hope that empathy across distance is met with the other support that the Japanese people need at this time.