BACKGROUND:
Guy Laliberté, Founder of Cirque du Soleil® and Chair of ONE DROP, flew to space in 2009. Millions of people all over the world gathered online and through various broadcasters to experience with him and the 14 readers from 14 different cities a few moments of common awareness with What the Drop of Water Had to Say, a poetic tale by Yann Martel. This extraordinary moment of global togetherness touched our hearts and opened our minds to one of the most important current issues: water. Beyond understanding the urgency of acting, Guy Laliberté invites us all – individually and collectively – to contribute to the global change that will allow access to water for all, as is explained in his dream. Each action we take contributes to the strength of this dream, shared by millions of other human beings. Together, we can create a ripple effect, one drop at a time, one step at a time. Inspired by his social mobilization initiative, we propose a response to Guy Laliberté’s invitation in order to continue the mission of raising awareness of water-related issues.

To find out more:
•Guy Laliberté’s Poetic Social Mission in 2009
•Moving Stars and Earth for Water, a global one-of-a-kind event aimed at raising awareness of water-related issues. Watch online >

PROJECT OVERVIEW:
Based on Yann Martel’s What the Drop of Water Had to Say, young people start discussing water-related issues in their area. They are then invited to create their own evocative phrases or their own poems (depending on their age). Personal productions will be shared via ePals. ONE DROP will select some of these texts to create a dynamic, catchy multimedia montage that will be available on the ONE DROP website.

SKILLS DEVELOPED THROUGH THIS PROJECT:

Language skills
• - Understanding a poetic text.
• - Identifying the vocabulary used by the author to talk about the reality and feelings expressed in the poem.
• - Recognizing the groups of words suggesting evocative images and differentiating the actual meaning from the figurative sense.
• - Exploring linguistic concepts used in poetry and including a few of them in a personal production. Using them to create a creative text.
• - Generating the participant’s own evocative images in line with the participant’s communication intent.

Social/moral skills
• - Understanding the importance of water for life on Earth.
• - Expressing emotions related to the social, economic and environmental issue that is water.
• - Doing something positive for water.

Artistic skills
• - Opening up to the aesthetics of words beyond their functionality (e.g. sound, meaning and grouping of words).
• - Using your creativity to compose an original message (images, emotions and rhythm).

 

Common Core ELA Standards

 

Writing 4, 6

Speaking and Listening 1

Students will create a poetic piece on water-related issues.

Collage (adapted for ages 6-9), calligram (adapted for ages 10-12) and engaged poetry (adapted for students ages 13+).

Work can be uploaded to the ePals Student Media Gallery to share with students from around the world. Mention the One Drop Project in your description when you upload the work so it can be tagged correctly in the gallery.

PROJECT ELEMENTS:
This project consists of three distinctive steps that can be experienced over the course of three different days so as to allow time to assimilate. The first two steps aim to prepare the poetic piece suggested in Step 3 by providing the participants with tools.

Step 1: Discovering the world of What the Drop of Water Had to Say by Yann Martel.
•This part consists of reading the poetic tale and exchanging ideas as a group in order to understand the meaning of the piece.

Step 2: Exploring creative workshops on water.
•These workshops awaken participants’ creativity in an active and fun way. It is a transition between the poetic tale by Yann Martel and the creation of their own poetic piece.

Step 3: My poetic social mission.
•The highlight of the project, Step 3 suggests various ways to create a poetic piece on water-related issues—collage, calligram and engaged poetry.

ePals Community: Throughout the project, members of the ePals community are invited to discuss the evolution of their project online and to share the fruit of their work with other classrooms throughout the world trhough email, through their project workspace or by uploading indvidual class work to the ePals Student Work Media Gallery.

Poetic Social Mission: Drops of Poetry Teacher's Pack PDF

The suggested timeline for this project is three class sessions.

Project Leader:

Country:
Subjects: Reading, Writing

# of Students: 21-30
Age Range: 9-10
Collaboration: Email Exchange, Skype / Video Chat
Languages: English

About my classroom: BF Yancey is a small, rural elementary school of approximately 150 students in grades pre-Kindergarten through Fifth, located in central Virginia, USA. We are interested in communicating with other students from as many countries as possible regarding your school lunch experience. Do students eat in a cafeteria or common space? What foods are eaten for lunch at school where you live? Is the lunchtime meal prepared by the school or do students bring their own food from home? Are the meals sourced from local farmers and providers? What are the components of your favorite school lunch? We are especially interested in collecting photos of school lunches from around the world! Currently, we prefer to correspond by email and Skype, and to write at least 2x per month. We look forward to meeting you and learning about the food culture of your area.