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.