Morning Adorable

This year I have been creating my own Activboard flip charts with current events. On the Los Angeles Times website, I discovered an interesting feature: Your Morning Adorable.  They feel the best way to start your day is with an adorable animal photo.
Last week I started adding a morning adorable photo to our morning flip [...]

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Chinese Poetry: The Three Perfections

In Ancient China, scholars believed in the Three Perfections: painting, poetry, and calligraphy. Steven’s lesson today introduced the children to calligraphy as an art. Steven has visited China where he has met calligraphers dedicated to keeping old traditions alive, and hung a beautiful scroll made by Hu Fengquan.
After gathering everyone around a large table, Steven [...]

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Chinese Poetry: Your Life is Full of Treasures

On Steven Ratiner’s third classroom visit, he started the lesson by talking with the children about the art of revision. He shared his personal poetry notebook and showed how he revises again and again, always in search of the perfect words to capture images.   Through revision, a poet works until he/she owns all of [...]

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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 [...]

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