The fact that it's already February school vacation week is actually crazy. It feels like we were just getting back to school and sharing stories about our summer! This vacation was very much needed though, for both the kids and for me. I always find that this time of year is draining. The cold weather is getting old and while the days are getting ever-so-slightly longer, even more sunshine would be welcomed with open arms. Mid-year report cards and parent/teacher conferences have come and gone, the work is getting harder, and the "let it slides" from the beginning of the school year are now a thing of the past. So, yes February vacation snuck up on us, but thank goodness it did!

We had a few cool events this week. The first had to do with poetry. Robert Leoni is a fifth grader, and last year during our poetry unit, he began getting really into writing poetry. He would regularly type up poems and share them with me on Google Drive. He is incredibly gifted, and we compiled enough poetry to put together two full books of his poems. He still writes poetry and shares his poems with me, and so his teachers kindly let me arrange for him to come in and chat with this year's fourth graders. He talked about what inspires him to write poetry and his "journey" as a poet, and he read some of his poems to the class. The kids then got about fifteen minutes to write poetry, with Robert and I circulating the room to support them. I'm hoping we can do this activity with Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom when our three-week cycle switches and I have that class in the afternoons.

We also had the Kennedy School talent show this week! And to represent the fourth grade, our very own Shay and Basilia sang on stage. It takes so much guts to get up there in front of the whole school, and I was so so proud of the two of them. I talked to one of the upper grade teachers after the show, and she said that my expression during their performance was priceless. Apparently I was grinning from ear to ear, looking like a proud parent...

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Owen and Seriyah. Owen did a particularly awesome job during class on Friday. Students were assigned two poems to read and annotate, and then they answered questions about the poems on Chromebooks. One of those questions involved typing up a response about the poet's message. Owen got right to work, and just did an all-around awesome job. He's done great with poetry, and Seriyah has too. Seriyah is a natural when it comes to writing poetry, and I love when she shows me the poems that she is able to whip up in just a few minutes. She also has shown a lot of growth lately in dealing with frustration, and I'm proud of her progress this year.

  

 

 

MY SIS CAME IN THIS WEEK! She's my best friend, and she's a third year medical student in Worcester. She was in town for a few days doing some work at BU, so she came in for a little on Wednesday morning to meet some of the kiddos. Unfortunately she could only stay for a half hour, so it was only my homeroom that was graced with her lovely presence. She talked about the longggg process of becoming a doctor, and I even tricked her into doing some poetry-related-brainstorming for a writing activity we did after she left. I love getting to show off my sis to my students, and vice versa of course! She was very impressed with them. :)

We're in the thick of our poetry unit, and it's been super cool to see some of the poetry writing some of the kids have been doing. The natural talent and creativity that this unit brings out in them honestly blows me away. On a different note, and yet still related to writing: GRAMMAR. It's rough. Grammar and spelling have taken a back seat in education over the past decade, with comprehension becoming the primary focus. Though this is understandable, basic writing conventions are still vital, and recently I stumbled upon a really neat program called NoRedInk. This site has students take a grammar diagnostic assessment, and those results reveal both whole class and individual needs related to parts of speech, punctuation, capitalization, etc. Then I can assign lessons, practice, and posttests that lead to student mastery. In addition, students can track their own progress in several areas, and guide their own lessons and practice based on individualized need. But the coolest part is that they get to pick a whole bunch of interests--movies, shows, music, books, sports, you name it--and all of the questions and content in their account incorporates their chosen interests. So, they love it (as much as a kid could love a quality online educational program, of course). 

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Emma and Antonio. Emma's writing....there are literally no words. (Kids: what kind of "literally" are we talking about there?!) She is so incredibly creative and descriptive with her ideas and word choice, and lately she's been doing some extra writing that she so kindly has shared with me. It is amazing! Antonio also really impressed me this week. He's been participating a bunch, and working hard to make sense of the pretty challenging figurative language we've been exploring. Check out the picture of him using an iPad during a STEAM-related figurative language activity that had the students scanning QR codes to reveal song lyrics in which they worked in groups to analyze. Cool, huh?

    

My apologies in advance for the number of photos in this post. We had a lot going on this week! First off, it was Literacy Week at the Kennedy. We had Mr. Marshall come in to read to the class, students dress up as their favorite literary characters, and some quality reading time with the 6th graders. We also were invited to check out some impressive STEAM work done by the 3rd graders, which you can see in some of the pictures below. By far my favorite event of the week happened on Friday at 2:15: D (Drop), E (Everything), A (And), R (Read). What a wonderful way to end the week! With the vast curriculum I'm required to teach my students, I definitely don't provide them with as much independent reading time as I'd like to. Having those twenty minutes for the kids to be silently engrossed in their books was SO nice though, it makes me wish we could do that more. It didn't hurt that I got to join them...

On Wednesday, there was the superintendent's breakfast for the Student of the Quarter awards. This quarter, the focus was on leadership, and the two fourth graders to earn this recognition were Mason and Dylan. Both boys aren't the most outspoken students in the room, which is a quality that is sometimes thought of when it comes to leadership. Rather (and more importantly), both boys share this humble reliability that Mrs. O'Keefe and I really appreciate. They consistently work hard, remain positive, display an eagerness to learn, and are kind to their peers, which makes them role models to their classmates. They are super deserving of this leadership award, and we're really proud of them. Congrats boys!

Poetry is HARD. Honestly, it's probably the hardest genre for most kids. This is because of all the figurative language and layers of meaning found in many poems. This week, we explored the words "literal" and "figurative", and discussed how it's important to recognize when poets are being nonliteral with the words, phrases, and lines they use in their poems. One really enjoyable aspect of the poetry unit is how applicable the poetry vocabulary and reading strategies are to song lyrics, because in reality, songs are poems. I have a collection of lines and verses from songs that I weave into my lessons throughout the unit, and the kids really seem to enjoy it. (Although I will say that unfortunately nowadays, it's not as easy to find songs on the radio that have one hundred percent school appropriate lyrics...)

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Zack and Aden. Both boys are incredibly bright, creative, and full of energy. Both have done well this week with poetry because that "digging deeper" thinking and analysis of poems comes naturally to them. In the same way, they excel when it comes to creative writing. They are both able to write in a way that allows the reader to picture what's going on in the story, which makes it fun to read. Both boys have bright futures ahead of them, that's for sure.


And to conclude this post, I have one last thing to say: GO PATS!