Greetings from Charleston, South Carolina! Hopefully everyone is enjoying their February break. I'm down South for a few days visiting friends, and of course savoring the second half of our school vacation week. January felt like a very long month--as it always seems to--so a brief getaway and some time off was just what the doctor ordered.

We did a whole lot of writing the week before break. After analyzing poems for the poet's message, we planned and wrote text-based responses to support that idea. Another type of writing we've begun exploring is text-based narrative writing, which is referred to as "narrative writing tasks". This involves reading a passage, then writing in response to a prompt that has students either writing the next scene of the story, writing a new ending to the story, or writing the story from a different character's perspective. This week, we tried our hand at writing from a different character's perspective. We read a story titled "Across the Blue Mountains", pulled out key information from the story, then planned a writing from Chester's point of view...and Chester just so happens to be a cat in the story. Most students either finished or came close to finishing their version of the story, and I was proud of the effort I saw put forth (especially since the actual writing part took place on Friday, which was both the Friday before vacation and Valentine's Day...). A lot is involved with this type of writing because not only do you have to understand the passage and weave elements from the passage into your writing, you need to be able to write in a way that encompasses description, characterization, dialogue--all the pieces that make for a good story. Honestly though, narrative writing tasks are a bit more fun to teach than essays, because they allow kids to get creative.

Our Bucket Fillers this past week were Natalie and Ari. And what fabulous names to be pulled. Let's start with Natalie. Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. There are far too many positive things to say about her. She is incredibly bright, but also admirably humble and genuinely receptive to feedback. She's been doing lots of extra writing this year, and she truly values and uses the tips I give her. In fact, she even went home on Friday and took the time to finish her Chester narrative writing task outside of school. And I'm glad she did, because she did an awesome job. Speaking of awesome, we have Ari. Ari is awesome. (That's an example of which element of poetry, kids? Hint: it has to do with sounds...) He's been super impressive in his understanding of poetry and ability to make sense of figurative language. More importantly though, he's kind. He often makes thoughtful comments, and this week, I pulled him aside to thank him for one of those comments I heard him quietly make in defense of me. His reaction was indicative of how sincere he is--he hadn't thought twice about what he'd said. It was no big deal to him. Ari is just naturally kind...and awesome, of course.

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. It's so 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 unit's vocabulary is to the media we're surrounded by nowadays. So many advertisements and slogans incorporate similes, metaphors, wordplay, and personification, that figurative language really is all around us. To emphasize that point, and to keep students on the look out for anything and everything nonliteral, I selected a few commercials from last weekend's super bowl and had students try to identify examples of figurative language weaved into each ad. We analyzed each piece of figurative language and then discussed the reasoning for including it in the commercial. It was a fun activity.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Eric and Sha'Nelize. Eric one hundred percent blew me away this week. I was beyond impressed with all of the effort he put into his work during our ELA lessons. He was consistently focused, on task, and working hard. Not only that, but the amount of participation I saw from him this week made me so proud. I think I may have pulled him aside on at least five different occasions to express my delight and excitement for his hard work and participation. Sha'Nelize has grown in resilience, stamina, and independence this year. Although she started the school year in Ms. Attard's homeroom, she's now officially on my homeroom list, and I'm so grateful that she's been spending more and more time in our classrooms. I adore her, and I look forward to having a front row seat as she continues to progress and flourish this year.

  

 

One of my favorite parts of the poetry unit is how easy it is to incorporate whole class discussions on the rug into the lessons. While we only did that for one lesson this week, I was reminded how much I love having the students share their thinking and build off of each other's ideas. Poetry is often not literal, so it involves the kids doing a lot of inferring in order to make sense of what the poet is trying to say. During this unit, we've already started learning strategies to help us do just that. This includes rereading the poem a few times, breaking down the meaning of each line and stanza of the poem, and tracking the imagery the poet is creating in your mind. On Friday of this week, we focused on figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors. To make things relevant and engaging for the kids, we used the lyrics of well-known songs to identify and analyze examples of similes and metaphors. I compiled excerpts of lyrics from a bunch of songs, like "Firework" by Katy Perry, "Happier" by Marshmello, "Titanium" by David Guetta, and "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato. It was fun playing the songs too, and having the students recognize that figurative language really is everywhere!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Maggie and Samar. Maggie really stood out for her participation during our discussions about the poems and songs we read. She was super engaged and eager to share her ideas. One of the aspects of my job for which I am most grateful is when kids show enthusiasm for what we're doing and what we're learning, and Maggie does that on a regular basis. So thanks, Maggie. :) I also owe a big thank you to Samar. She and Eva were lifesavers this week in how much they helped me prepare the final copies of our landmark magazines for both classes. After printing each student's pages, the next steps were to cut them out, glue them together, arrange them in the lamination sheets, and put each one through the laminator. Well Samar and Eva were wonderful in their willingness to help me out and attentiveness while doing so, and they ended up saving me a ton of time. Samar is always up to help me and help others, and I really appreciate that about her!