Curiosity, Moths, and Moving Beyond the Five Paragraph Essay

Tonight I should be working on final preparations for a workshop with English teachers tomorrow, but instead, I’m researching moths.   I can’t say I’ve ever had much interest in moths before, but I also have never before seen one like the one I saw today.  Today’s experience was even more sweet, given that I was with 35 middle and high school science teachers who regularly utilize literacy strategies to teach their content.

In between the sharing of strategies like word sort and concept ladders, someone from the facility came in the room to ask if there were any moth experts available.  Half a dozen science teachers rushed outside to see a moth.   My curiosity caught the best of me.  We called for a break and went outside to inspect this moth. 

Our best thoughts right now are that we saw a Pandora Sphinx Moth.  I tweeted a picture of the moth and received a reply from a friend and former colleague who reminded me “form matches function at every level.”  She, as she usually does, provided me more to consider in my musings, but I’ll have to get back to musing on moths later because right now I need to gather my wits for talks tomorrow about why we need to teach students to move beyond the five paragraph essay in English class.

Form does match function at every level.