Tea Party at the Orchid Pavilion

It was a frosty cold day outside, but inside our cozy treehouse classroom, the students were deeply immersed in a new Ancient Chinese poetry lesson with our poet in residence, Steven Ratiner.
Steven began the lesson with a discussion about the cult of friendship.  In Ancient China, as in China today, friendships are valued.  Back then,  [...]

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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 [...]

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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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Finding Your Poetic Voice

As sunlight streamed down through the autumn leaves out the windows of our own classroom tree house, we were fortunate enough to have our first classroom visit today from Steven Ratiner, our poet in residence.  After giving the children an overview of the timeline of Ancient Chinese dynasties, he explained how we will be borrowing [...]

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Chinese Scrolls

Following Steven Ratiner’s wonderful Chinese painting and poetry lesson, the children worked to revise their poems to capture the images imagined in their paintings. During the past two weeks, we have written the poems in ink on the painting, signed them in red Chinese ink with a handmade chop, and mounted them on beautiful [...]

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Chinese Poetry: Calligraphy as an Art

 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. The picture above shows Mr. Hu in [...]

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Chinese Poetry: You Are the Author of Your Own Life

Note: Poetry written by the class is posted in link at top of page. 
On Steven Ratiner’s third classroom visit, he started the lesson by talking with the children about how they are the author and narrator of their own lives, but when you listen to a singer, for example, the lyrics belong to someone else, [...]

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Chinese Poetry: Dreaming About a Perfect Place

When Steven Ratiner visited our classroom on Thursday, he started the session with a lesson about the art of revision.  After looking at a short poem about a horse “going” along the beach, the class brainstormed a list of new verbs to replace the word “going,” and examined how each new verb changed the [...]

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