February vacation has come and (almost) gone, and I'm just now getting to last week's blog post! It feels like a really long time ago that we came back from the weekend to a Monday with....no power! It was quite the experience. It was mildly overwhelming to think on my feet and completely revamp my poetry lesson for the day. It's crazy to think about how much we rely on electricity, from documents on Google Drive to the SMARTBoard to the copy machine. We ended up playing a game in teams centered around the poet's message. The kids showed so much flexibility and we ended up having a great time. (Check out the pictures below, along with some spectacularly neat handwriting by Miss Isadora.) Another fun-filled power outage happened later in the week, but we got around that one too. We spent a lot of time on writing about poetry this week. We analyzed the poem "Ode to Family Photographs" by Gary Soto and uncovered what we thought was the poet's message. We then planned and wrote about the message, proving it with evidence from the poem. We'll do another writing about a poem on the Monday we get back from break and then we have our poetry test on Tuesday. I'm super excited for our field trip at the end of the week too!

Tommy and Amanda were our Bucket Fillers of the week. Both students have done a really nice job in our poetry unit. Tommy's improvement throughout the course of the unit made me so proud. He went from being unsure of what a poet's message is to figuring out the message of some super difficult poems. Amanda also impressed me with her ability to analyze poetry. In addition, she's been writing poems galore and really making the most of her poetry notebook. Nice job you two!

I had a very exciting week this week...I have a new niece! And guess what her name is...Kennedy!!! I can't wait to tell the kids tomorrow. My sister-in-law's due date was on Super Bowl Sunday. (Considering the outcome of the game, perhaps it was a good thing she was a few days late!) I was on  high alert all week in anticipation of a text letting me know the baby was coming. That text finally came on Friday morning, and when I told the kids they all started clapping and cheering. Kennedy was officially born that afternoon and she is absolute perfection. Check out her picture below :)

Thinking about our poetry unit being over in just a few weeks is SO sad. I love this unit. This week, we focused on figurative language, rhythm, tone, and the poet's message. Monday was one of the most enjoyable lessons for me because it involved students analyzing the lyrics of well-known songs. I compiled lyrics with similes or metaphors from a bunch of songs. Some of the songs were "Firework" by Katy Perry, "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato, "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons, and "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane (covered by Rascal Flatts). It was so much fun playing the songs in the background and having the students recognize that figurative language really is everywhere!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Brent and Nariya. Brent is an incredibly avid reader. His enthusiasm for reading has without a doubt strengthened his vocabulary and ability to understand and analyze complex texts. He rocks at being able to pull meaning from challenging poems. Nariya is a sweetheart. She's always smiling and positive, and you can't help but smile when you're around her. Nice job Nariya!

Health wise, we are struggling here in fourth grade. We've had so many students sick lately, something is most definitely going around! Mrs. O'Keefe was even out sick for three days this week. I'm not sure how I've avoided it... (knock on wood...) Viruses aside, our week was great. On Tuesday we got to attend the school-wide talent show. It was awesome to see so many students show off their talents and creativity. We didn't have any fourth graders participate, but after the talent show some of them were already brainstorming their acts for next year. On Wednesday we had another special guest for our poetry unit: our vice principal Mr. Marshall! Mr. Marshall has been regularly writing poetry since he was in elementary school. He wrote a poem a few weeks ago as an ode to our very own fourth graders. I asked him if he could come in and read it to us, and then lead the kids in a lesson breaking down the meaning of different parts of the poem. Lucky for us, he agreed! It was wonderful to see the kids analyze a poem that was written especially for them. So many kids have been writing their own poems too, which has been such a treat.

In writing, we're taking our expository writing (on an important person, place, or thing) through the steps of the writing process. We are on the revising stage, specifically focusing on organizing our writing in a way that clearly responds to the prompt. We'll eventually be publishing these pieces. It'll be fun to look at the progression from their original brain frames to jot down ideas, to another graphic organizer grouping those ideas, to an initial rough draft, to a second draft, and eventually to typed up writings.

Below you'll see pictures from the Snowflake Festival on Thursday and our school-wide assembly on Friday. At the assembly, students learned some dances led by the Somerville High School Dance Team to kick off our Health and Fitness Week, which will begin on Monday. Our Bucket Fillers this week were Kailyn and Jordyn. Kailyn has been writing poems galore! Her poems have revolved around all sorts of topics, from the Patriots, to softball, to beaches, to boredom. I love her enthusiasm for poetry. Jordyn worked really hard during writing this week. Her second draft of her expository essay blew me away. I love pushing her to incorporate description in her writing, because she's so good at it! Congrats ladies...and GO PATRIOTS!