We survived our first field trip, and fortunately our primarily positive behavior proved that we can handle more field trips in the future! We went to the Longfellow House in Cambridge. Since they limit the number of people in the house at one time, my homeroom went on Tuesday and Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom went on Wednesday. I got to bring both classes, and I had a great experience with the kids on both days. To get there, we walked to Porter Station, took the T to Harvard, and walked about ten minutes from there. When we got to the house, we were split into two groups. One group started with the tour of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house, while the other group started with the poetry writing workshop. Then we switched. The tour of the house was really neat. 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. In the poetry writing workshop, students talked about the word "inspiration" and how it relates to poetry, then they learned how to write a haiku. They then worked in groups of two or three to write their own haiku about a topic that inspires them. The goal was to avoid stating their topic in their poem, but instead 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 poetry related to all sorts of sources of inspiration. Make sure to check out the haikus written by both classes below! Can you guess the topic of each poem...?

On Thursday after lunch, the sixth graders came in to teach the fourth graders some strategies for taking notes. They were grouped in twos or threes, and the fourth graders were expected to take notes while the sixth graders shared their Ancient Egypt projects. It was awesome! Kids often overthink note taking, especially in fourth grade when it's a new study skill for them. So it was really beneficial to have sixth grade role models give them advice and feedback on how to take notes in an organized and helpful way.

I was out on Friday because one of my friends from high school got married in San Antonio, Texas. Since I was also just in San Diego for a conference, I feel like I've been out quite a bit lately. Fortunately that streak is over! I got a positive report about the kids' behavior, and the substitute specifically gave me two names of stand out students. So, those are our Bucket Fillers for the week! Those two students were Seriyah and Lyla. Both girls were extremely helpful and polite while I was out. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, as they both have really stepped up in terms of helping me out whenever I need it. I really appreciate the favors they're both constantly doing for me and their eagerness to support me in keeping the classroom running smoothly!