My colleague Erica knows I like to raise butterflies. After recess, she came into my classroom exclaiming “You Have to see this moth on the playground!”
My students and I rushed out to find it. At first it was poised on the brick post of the pavilion. Then one of them stimulated it with a stick and it flew to me. Fascinating large creature that is camouflaged as a leaf. Who knew?
With my students, we researched and found out that it was a Pandorus Sphinx Moth. I wrote a found poem from the information on the website Insect Identification. In this poem, each word in the poem comes from the article in the order it was found.
Playground Discovery
Hawk moth
boasts– robust
fast fliers on
aerodynamic wings.The Pandorus Sphinx Moth
blending in
inside woodlands
at dusk or dawn.
Reflections on the Teche 