Q1.
Add more lines to the incomplete poem given below. Include information on the different stages in development of a frog. You may also draw and paint each stage as it appears in your poem. — “In shaded and grassy bogs, / There lived a group of frogs. / They happily sang from dusk to dawn, / In double bass going on and on. / One day sitting beside a reed, / Female frogs think it's time to breed ……..”
Answer
Your poem must carry the science as well as the rhyme. Before you write, list the stages in order so that no stage is left out:
Spawn (jelly of eggs) → Embryo → Tadpole with a tail → Tadpole with hind legs → Froglet → Adult frog
Sample answer — continue from the last printed line, keeping the same rhyming pairs:
She laid her eggs in a jelly-like clutch,
A floating white spawn that we must not touch.
In three or four days, if you look with care,
A dark little embryo is stirring in there.
By the seventh day out the tadpoles slide,
With long flat tails to help them glide.
No legs at all, so the tail must do —
It steers them past the weeds and through.
Eight weeks on, and what do we see?
Two hind legs kicking, wild and free.
By twelve weeks more, four legs and a stump —
A froglet learning its first small jump.
At fourteen weeks the tail is gone,
Strong legs to leap and land upon.
On land and water it makes its home,
And back to the pond its eggs will come.
So round and round the story goes,
From jelly to tadpole, from tadpole to toes —
The life cycle turning, again and again,
Beginning once more with the monsoon rain.
A floating white spawn that we must not touch.
In three or four days, if you look with care,
A dark little embryo is stirring in there.
By the seventh day out the tadpoles slide,
With long flat tails to help them glide.
No legs at all, so the tail must do —
It steers them past the weeds and through.
Eight weeks on, and what do we see?
Two hind legs kicking, wild and free.
By twelve weeks more, four legs and a stump —
A froglet learning its first small jump.
At fourteen weeks the tail is gone,
Strong legs to leap and land upon.
On land and water it makes its home,
And back to the pond its eggs will come.
So round and round the story goes,
From jelly to tadpole, from tadpole to toes —
The life cycle turning, again and again,
Beginning once more with the monsoon rain.
What makes this a good answer: every one of the six stages appears, in the right order, with the correct timings from Fig. 10.8 (day 3–4, day 7–10, 8–10 weeks, 12 weeks, 14 weeks). The rhyme carries the science instead of replacing it, and the last verse brings the cycle back to the beginning — which is exactly what a life cycle does.
Tip for the drawing: paint six small panels down the side of the page, one for each stage, and write the age under each — Day 1, Day 3–4, Day 7–10, 8–10 weeks, 12 weeks, 14 weeks. Your poem and your painting then tell the same story twice.