Happy three-day weekend! Naturally I spent a large portion of the day today at Teacher's Pet in Methuen buying more goodies for the classroom. I'm a teacher nerd and I am incapable of spending less than an hour in that place. I hope all the kids are enjoying their day off!

I had Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom for intervention block, writing, and social studies this past week. Students are working on book group projects during intervention, while I re-test students using the Fountas and Pinnell benchmark reading assessment. I tested students at the beginning of the school year, so I'm re-testing them to track their growth and figure out which areas of phonics, fluency, and comprehension each child needs to focus on. In writing, we talked about how there is persuasion all around us. Students brought in examples from home and we had a circle discussion evaluating the effectiveness of each advertisement, commercial, billboard, etc. We began to talk about different persuasive writing strategies, and we'll continue to learn and practice those strategies as the unit progresses. In social studies, students did an awesome job deconstructing touchstone texts, like poems that related to their states.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Ava C. and Isadora. Ava is such a sweet girl. She is flexible and positive, and I like how she seeks out help when she doesn't understand something. Isadora never fails to make me laugh. She is creative and witty, and she thinks my jokes are funny too, which I'm grateful for of course. :) Can't wait to have lunch with each of them this week!

It feels like I haven't seen the kids in forever! This week was a unique one. Two of my best friends got married this past weekend, so I got approved for two personal days (Thursday and Friday) back in September. I was supposed to leave Wednesday night and only miss those two days of school. Well, come Tuesday morning it was looking like a monster storm was yet again going to wreak havoc in the area. Long story short, after mass chaos with our flights getting cancelled and rebooked and cancelled and rebooked numerous times, I had to miss school on Wednesday too. I felt pretty terrible missing three days in a row, but alas, we had yet another snow day on Thursday! And from what I've heard, it wasn't exactly necessary...

We've started a new writing unit! We're now focusing on opinion writing. We did a fun activity as an introduction to the unit and started talking about how this type of writing differs from expository and narrative writing. With our social studies research good to go, we turned to the written portion of our road trip project. Students analyzed some excerpts of a touchstone text that emulates qualities I want them to incorporate into their pretend journal entries. When I was out, students worked in groups to write a practice entry for Somerville. Soon enough, we'll begin drafting the entry for our first state.

(Since I was out, we didn't do Bucket Filler this week and my pictures below are very limited!)

I'm done with the snow. Seriously, the snow needs to stop. It is taking away from quality teaching time! This week felt super rushed and jam-packed. It was College and Career Readiness Week too, so we missed out on some of those days as a result of the storm. I'm going to try to incorporate some discussions around college and careers next week. We did get a chance to go to the Career Fair on Thursday, which was fun. There were stands set up that focused on a variety of careers, from architecture to the FBI to theater arts. After our time was up, the class did not want to leave!

In ELA this week, we started a new unit that ties in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. We'll be focusing on various types of text-based writing. It's definitely a demanding unit, but I'm confident that the kids can handle it. In writing, we finished up our focus on expository writing. We'll be transitioning to persuasive writing in the upcoming weeks. 

We had one of my favorite human beings in the world as a guest in our classroom today...my dad! Every year, he comes in around Saint Patrick's Day. He grew up in Ireland and we lived there for a few years when I was younger. My dad's family lives over there, so we visit often. My dad talked about all things Irish- from the differences in schooling, to Ireland's geography, to some fun facts. He also taught us some Gaelic, which was neat. I love the pictures of all of us below!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were James and Bianca. James is a hard worker with a positive attitude. He is a leader among his classmates and just an all-around awesome kid. Bianca is awesome too. She has a huge heart, a clever wit, and she greets each day with a giant smile. I'm looking forward to having lunch with the both of them next week!

While I am genuinely ready for this whole snow situation to be over, having a snow day Thursday wasn't too shabby. Then it was strange to come back on Friday feeling like it was Monday. Apparently, we have more snow coming our way this upcoming week, so we'll see how that goes. The students in my homeroom made a bet on Wednesday about whether or not we'd have the snow day on Thursday. The boys ended up voting that yes, there would be a day off, while the girls voted that there wouldn't be. The losing group has to work together to come up with one detailed, sincere compliment for each member of the winning team. Well ladies, get ready for some quality compliment brainstorming on Monday. Friday was a crazy day so we didn't get to follow through with the bet, but we will definitely do so on Monday. I love compliments!

We had a half day on Wednesday of this week. I enjoy half days because I like getting the entire group of fourth graders together in one room. This Wednesday, we read the book "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere", a beautifully illustrated version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem. Our Henry let us borrow this book, because with the field trip last week, we are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experts. We also all gathered together for Second Step and for the introduction to this week's STEAM activity. On Friday of this week, we got to go to the Unplugged Arcade put on by the 7th and 8th graders. The middle schoolers have been working for weeks creating arcade games out of wood and various materials. It's awesome seeing how creative they get, and the kids had a great time playing the games. On Friday afternoon, we had a kickoff assembly for College and Career Readiness Week. I always love this week, because it's fun to talk about college and careers with the kids and answer any questions they may have. You'll find some pictures of these events below. The last picture is from this Saturday. The kids always talk about their sporting events during connections, so I try to attend some of them throughout the school year. Kailyn let me know the time of her hockey game this weekend, so I came and we surprised Ronan and Cameron, who are also on her team. I was so impressed with their skating and hockey abilities! 

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Eleanor and Henry. Eleanor and I are two peas in a pod (or should I say, "two socks in a pair", right Eleanor?) Not only does she work hard in class, she also always puts a smile on my face with her fun-loving personality. Henry's personality also shines. Everybody loves him and enjoys his company, and the progress he's made this year is outstanding. Congratulations, you two!

Well, Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom and I can officially say that we survived a nor'easter on Friday. Throughout our treks in the pouring rain and billowing wind to and from the T, we kept reminding ourselves of one thing: this was an adventure! And an adventure it was. Despite the not-so-pleasant weather, the kids were such amazing sports and remained positive and enthusiastic. It was ironic that the weather was so terrible for us on Friday's trip to the Longfellow House, because when I took my homeroom on Thursday, it was beautiful, warm, and sunny out. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed both trips. The kids were SO awesome, and the tour guides were beyond complimentary of them. The field trip was split into two parts. One part was a tour of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house. In each room, we stopped and analyzed a poem that Longfellow wrote. The poem always related to the particular room we were in. The kids got the opportunity to read parts of the super challenging poems aloud, make sense of them, and ask questions. Their participation surpassed my expectations. The second part of the trip was a poetry writing workshop. Students talked about the word "inspiration", how it relates to poetry, and learned what a haiku is. They then worked in groups of two or three to write their own haiku about a topic that inspired them. The goal was to avoid stating their topic in their haiku, but rather to use their senses to convey the topic. The rest of the group had to guess what the haiku was about. I loved seeing the kids use their creativity and teamwork to write about all sorts of sources of inspiration. Overall, both classes made me so so incredibly proud with their engagement throughout the tour and workshop. I can't wait for more field trips!

The other major focus of our week was the poetry slam. We had one for my homeroom on Thursday and one for Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom on Friday. Oh gosh...how do I even begin to describe both events? There are no words. These kids blew me and the rest of the audience away. I had envisioned a poetry slam since the beginning of the unit, when they wrote that first poem in class. I couldn't have even begun to imagine how everything actually played out. The poems the kids selected to read (poems that they wrote) were at times powerful, at times clever, and at all times creative. Everyone participated in the slam. They were so brave to get up there and share their poetry with their peers and other guests. They all talked about their poetry after reading, making sure to include at least one poetry vocabulary word in whatever they said. Mr. Marshall was there for both our poetry slams, even participating in one of them, and Mr. Hurrie came by on Friday. I will never forget these two days in fourth grade. From the field trip to the poetry slam, I felt really fortunate to be a teacher to this wonderful group of kids.

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were McKayla and Ariana D. McKayla really warmed my heart during the poetry slam. Her poem was about me and it was truly touching. Thank you McKayla! I was also moved by Ariana this week. On Friday, one of her classmates was really cold and upset upon our return to the Kennedy. She was such a supportive and kind friend to him, and the three of us ended up having lunch together in the classroom. I love kindness...and I love poetry!

*Below are a whole bunch of pictures from the trips and the poetry slams. I tried to take pictures of all the kids, but unfortunately some of the photos didn't turn out so fabulous. Below are the ones that made the cut- there are still quite a few!