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!