Learning Outcomes

(** Throughout this section, click on the upper left icon to return to the Activities Main page **) Between the Words A "write to learn" activity about the life cycle of the pacific salmon. Read Roderick Haig-Brown's Pacific Salmon: (Teachers will read this out to younger children) Discuss the meanings of Haig-Brown's poem with a partner, group, or whole class. Choose your favourite line from Pacific Salmon. Write your own prose around the words from the line of the poem you have chosen. Use the words from the poem in the same order in which they were written and in a different font so the reader may follow the words of the poem. Maintain the theme and tone of Haig-Brown's poem in your writing. For Example: The fullness of the salmon's belly sustains it for the journey back to its home stream. Is this going to be enough to keep it alive? The salmon must travel through fishing grounds and hide from hungry predators. Long nets are waiting to trap the fish and pollution is ready to choke them. May it soon return safely to its spawning stream. From the distant sea the salmon fights its way against the currents and fish ladders being inwardly drawn to its spawning grounds. There is not the desire for the salmon to feed as deliberately as it used to, only to huddle on the dark bottom of the sea and wait for the strong current to stir its insides. From the depths the salmon emerges, soon to return new life to the ocean. You can read the first line of the second verse of Haig-Brown's poem by following the green italics of the above piece of writing. You should be able to do the same with your writing. Now that you have written "Between the Words" of Roderick Haig-Brown's Pacific Salmon, you can share your work with a classmate. You may want to compare two pieces of writing which are based on the same line of the poem. You may want to compile a booklet which places each person's prose from the class in the same order in which the poem was written. In this case, make sure that all lines of the poem have been represented. Top of page.