Botany 2020
transcript for Writing Your Plant Love Story: A Science Writing Activity for Remote or In-Person Instruction
Opening: Caitlin sits on her porch wearing a Plant Love Stories sweatshirt and talking to the camera.
CAITLIN: I’m Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, part of the Plant Love Stories co-founding team! Whether you stalk the @PlantLoveStory twitter feed every week for a new story, you’ve read our scholarly papers, or you have never heard of us before — Welcome! We’re excited to share Writing Your Plant Love Story: A Science Writing Activity for Remote or In-Person Instruction
Slide 1: The Plant Love Stories logo sits in the upper left corner of the slide. There is a clipart white board surrounded by clipart books, notebooks, and a microscope. On the whiteboard is the text: Learning Objectives:
practice written communication
engage with the natural world
cultivate a sense of community & place
CAITLIN: Do your Fall 2020 Learning Objectives include practice written communication engage with the natural world cultivate a sense of community or place for a class that may not all be learning in the same location Are you looking for ways to assign flexible, low stakes writing that isn’t busywork and that might even be fun to grade? If your class has shifted online, do you need a platform for your remote students to share their connections with local landscapes and celebrate backyard botanizing? We’ve got a learning activity for you!
Slide 2: The Plant Love Stories logo sits in the upper left corner of the slide. On the right side of the screen is a grid of nine photos (Brady-bunch-style): these photos are headshots of the Plant Love Stories team. On the left side of the screen is a screenshot of a Plant Love Story blog post “To all the Trees I’ve Loved Before…”
CAITLIN: We are Plant Love Stories! We have been collecting and publishing weekly stories about plants on our website since 2018. Plant Love Stories centers the importance of narrative storytelling in science communication, both within the scientific community, and when we try to reach broader audiences. Stories have power: to bring people together, to connect people with nature, to help us bridge our research and our communities. At our core, we believe that everyone has a plant love story: a story about how plants have shaped your life. Writing a plant love story can be a powerful experience for students.
Slide 3: The Plant Love Stories logo sits in the upper left corner of the slide. Underneath, there is the text: A Plant Love Story assignment can be
A break from writing lab reports
A new perspective on a study species
A polished nature journal entry
To the right there is a stick figure holding a very large pencil seemingly writing the twitter handle (@PlantLoveStory) and web address (plantlovestories.com/eduresources) of Plant Love Stories.
As Caitlin speaks, a clipart notebook appears in the top right corner, with the text: Common Themes
Scientist/botanist origin story
Family heirloom
Love-Hate relationship
Strong sensory memory
CAITLIN: We have loved receiving Plant Love Stories submissions from class assignments. We’ve published stories from students at Bucknell, University of Pittsburgh, Rochester Institute of Technology, and University of Maine. Courses for science majors and non-majors have incorporated Plant Love Stories as a writing assignment. These can be reflections on lab or field exercises written for a nonscientific audience narrative nonfiction essays about study species or open-ended creative writing on natural history observations These common themes make excellent story prompts. Ask your students to write about Scientist/botanist origin story (the plant that started it all) Family heirlooms (plants that remind us of/came from our families) Love-Hate relationships (plants as frenemies) Strong sensory memories (the plants we hear/smell/feel/taste in our dreams) Give your students a space to tell their own Plant Love Stories, and offer them the opportunity to submit to us if they’re interested! These slides and more curriculum materials are available at www.plantlovestories.com/eduresources Go spread the plant love! Thank you!