Take a Journey Into Your Imagination

When Steven Ratiner, our poet in residence,  visited our classroom on Friday, he started the session with a lesson about the art of revision. He talked about how it is important to choose images for yourpoem carefully so the reader can see the story in their mind.  The title is important too and opens the door for the poem to come through. Steven himself, revises his own poems an average of 25 times. Through revision, a poet works until he/she owns all the words line by line, word by word, and image by image. For me, this really points out how a handwritten draft is becoming a lost art.

The children then shared some of their first poems with Steven. As each poem was read, Steven listened carefully and offered feedback without giving the children words to use.

Next Steven showed a beautiful hand painted scroll and demonstrated how it can take your

mind on a journey. He also shared a 100 year old hand carved wooden brush pot from China so intricately carved with a scene from nature, it looks like you can reach inside and touch the trees.

For today’s lesson, each child had brought from home a special object that hold memories for them such as a baseball, trophy, shell, or stone. A museum of objects was created in the classroom which the children toured until they found one, perhaps their own, that could take their mind on a journey “Use these objects to harness the power of your imagination,” Steven told the class. “When you feel ready, begin to writeyour poem. Show all steps in the journey and make your images sharp and clear. Take this journey and you may even learn a new secret about yourself.” With that, the children sat down and wrote. The results are amazing. We will soon be sharing them with you.

Chinese Poetry: Finding Your Own Area of Retreat

This past Wednesday, Steven Ratiner, our Chinese poet in residence, visited our classroom for the first time. After giving the children an overview of Ancient China, he explained how we will be borrowing poetic techniques from Ancient China, and will practice writing poems which will paint vivid images in the reader’s mind.

After hearing about events that often inspired the Chinese poets, we moved our lesson to the outdoor classroom overlooking the river.  Each child was instructed to find their own special spot.  This spot will become their area of retreat throughout the year.  Whenever we return for poetry or journal entries, each child will mark their special spot with a stone which will eventually become a small cairn. Focusing on this spot, the children will write about the changes they notice throughout the seasons.  This is similar to what Henry David Thoreau did at his cabin on Walden Pond.

At an assembly earlier this month, Steven discussed the theory of the open bowl. Using a singing bowl and wooden mallet from Tibet, he explained that when they are preparing to write poetry,  their minds should be open bowl. When the mind is open bowl, they become much more observant about the world around them and ready to write.  While the children waited quietly in their spot with their eyes closed,  Steven rubbed the wooden mallet around the rim of the bowl, making it sing. Once the ringing stopped, the children opened their eyes, ready to see the world around them in a new way, and began writing poems about whatever inspired them at the moment.

Artifacts of the Future

“What would people in the year 2525 learn about us if they went on and archaeological dig and discovered 19 tiny decorated clay pots from our class buried in the schoolyard?” That was the question posed to our class this week as an introduction to what archaeologists and historians can learn about the past.
To begin, each child was given a tiny clay flowerpot to secretly decorate with six symbols which they felt would tell about themselves. Knowing that it would be unlikely for archaeologists to find 19 clay pots over 500 years old in perfect condition, I told them that the pots would actually be broken and reassembled by someone else in our class who would not know the identity of the artist.
Yesterday we took on that challenge and there was a lot of excitement in the room as they carefully reassembled the pots using glue. Each child then worked to identify some of the symbols on the pots and attempted to figure out the actual artist. We will have our final projects on display during Open House next week.

Welcome to Fourth Grade!

Welcome to fourth grade!  It looks like we are going to have a great class.  One of our big projects this year will be keeping our class blog.  A homework link will be included.  

Be sure to check weekly for updates about our classroom activities.

Owl Pellets

There was great excitement in our room today during our science class. Wearing gloves and using small tweezers just like scientists, the students began dissecting owl pellets. At first everyone was a little skeptical, but soon there were cries of, “There’s teeth and a skull in here!” and the real scientific work and fun began.

The owl pellets (sanitized of course for school use) is a fairly new activity for our ecosystems unit. During these investigations, the children explore food chains and webs by dissecting owl pellets to determine the contents. This work must be done carefully with tweezers and toothpicks. Next week the students will begin matching some of the bones they have extracted to an ID sheet and will be piecing them carefully together to form as much of the skeleton as possible.

Cereality Day Breakfast Buffet

As part of our restaurant review writing project, we watched several videos of the Phantom Gourmet. In addition, we discovered a video and a website of an interesting restaurant concept, Cereality. At Cereality, customers can choose from a wide variety of their favorite cereals to mix and match with toppings. The class thought this was a wonderful idea for a restaurant, but since it is only in the midwest at this time, we decided to create our own version of it here at school.

For our own cereal breakfast cafe, the class had 14 cereals to choose from along with toppings, yogurt, fruit, and milk. Many thanks to CS11’s mother for running our own cafe today.

Click the comment section below to read excerpts from essays each child wrote about our cereal buffet.

Phantoms in Training

During the past two weeks, the class has been having a great time reading and listening to restaurant reviews written by the Phantom Gourmet. In addition, we expanded our search of restaurant review sites and discovered a few restaurants which are new to us and have an interesting concept. One of them, Cereality, features a breakfast cereal buffet with your choice of toppings. Although this restaurant is not in the Boston area yet, we have decided to create our own version of it in our classroom at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, everyone has been busy writing their own reviews of their favorite restaurants in the same style as the Phantom Gourmet. You can read their reviews on our new blog Phantoms in Training.

National Park Trading Cards & Powerpoints

Today our class is preparing for some special visitors. On Friday, a third grade class from down the hall will join us for our National Park/Landmark presentations. After carefully researching a National Park or landmark of their choice, each child put together a Powerpoint presentation complete with photographs and information about the historical significance of the place. The presentations are all well written and visually appealing. As a special treat, each student created a trading card for everyone in our class complete with a photograph and information about their sight.

We are very pleased with the results of our project and the students will be bringing their project home with them for you to enjoy.

Book Character Parade

We always know when spring has arrived when it’s time for the annual Book Character Parade. Everyone was very enthusiastic today and the costumes, ranging from Harry Potter to Curious George, were wonderful. Because the school is so big, many actually commented that it was the first time they had toured several of the classrooms. It may have been record breaking temperatures in the 90s, but that didn’t stop a great crowd of spectators outside the building to watch. Many thanks to all who attended today.

Can MCAS Math Prep Be Fun? Yes!

“This is a fun way to do morning work!” “Can we do the same thing again tomorrow?” Believe it or not, these were some of the comments made by the members of our class after a lesson introducing them to the style of questions found on the MCAS math test. What made the difference? A technology tool called ACTIVote.

ACTIVote was created by Promethean for use with the Activboard. After posing a multiple choice question to the class, each student can enter their selection A-E from a list by pushing a corresponding button. The class can then view the results in graph form. This allows us to automatically check the class for immediate understanding and each person is held accountable for an answer. Although the students do not know how their friends in the class answered the questions, the results can be printed out privately for the teacher in spread sheet form.