Week of April 25-29

This week, the 3rd graders continued to impress me with their ability to use poetic techniques like personification, figurative language, and descriptive language to describe ordinary things in poetic ways. We turned an ordinary stapler into a shark whose teeth are falling out, an alligator chomping its prey, and even a rabbit hopping along leaving a trail of teeth behind! We are starting to look at the world as poets, finding the extraordinary in everyday objects and places around us!

In 4th grade, some classes were still exploring the language of Shakespeare, while one class read a child-friendly version of Romeo and Juliet and took a closer look at the famous balcony scene. After viewing and reading the scene, the students chose a section to turn into a texting conversation between Romeo and Juliet using this site: http://iphonefaketext.com/

In 5th grade, we viewed the beginnings of some powerful TED Talks and learned what makes a good hook for a talk: a shocking statistic, jaw-dropping personal story, provocative question, powerful quote. We then wrote the first minute of our talks, making sure to hook our audience and state our thesis in a clear way.