Camping!

Drop Box

Why do People Write?

Here are some notes from one of our first conversations about writing.

Why do people write?

It’s fun!

To entertain

To express themselves

To remember/to remind

To share ideas, experiences, and memories

To share knowledge/info/thoughts/emotions/feelings

To let people know what’s going on

So others can experience what the writer did

To make $

To share life lessons

To warn someone

To create something new

To communicate

To inspire

To calm yourself

To process or figure something out, to think

To make people think

To learn

To convince

To help others

So as a writer, what do you want your reader to experience, regardless of your genre choice?  We want them...

To understand (understand=topic)

To get pulled in

To feel like they’re actually there

To feel what you hoped they would feel

To understand or feel your purpose (feel=purpose)

To think about the message

How the heck do we do that?!

Pick things that are personal to you.

Think about what’s happening now…write about what’s relevant to your readers.

Write from your heart.

What's in that heart?

You!

What you care about

Memories

Emotion

Too Pretty to do Homework?

Hi all,


I can't help myself from sharing this with you.  Forever 21 and JCPenny recently put shirts on their shelves that say "Allergic to Algebra" and "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."  This is abhorrent!  They've since pulled the shirts, but I still think this petition is worth signing.  We will talk about this at school on Monday.


Take care,


Lauren

K-Buddies

Here are some photos from our first day with our kindergarten buddies!  The students' job was to show them the ropes in the cafeteria and yard.  It's unbelievably sweet to watch the very cool fifth graders warm up to the tiny kindergartners!

September 14, 2011

The First Days of School

We had a wonderful first two days back!  You'll find a few photos below.  You'll see us trying to determine the area of our newly painted cork board, playing Bowl-A-Fact, and building newspaper towers.  Building newspaper towers is a team building activity students do to help them think about what makes a group work well.  Each group of 3 was given some newspaper and a roll of masking tape, and the challenge is to build a tower at least as tall as the tallest member of the group using only those materials.  After the building was complete, we had a conversation about what makes a group work well.  In their words:

• Instead of one person doing the work, everybody pitches in and contributes ideas.
• Listen to other people.
• Everybody does some work.
• Combine everybody's ideas.
• Have fun with it--don't be mad if it's not going well.
• Know when it's time to take a step back.
• You don't have to agree, but you have to be agreeable (Don't act in a bad way.).
• Make formal or informal jobs for everyone--assign based on talents.
• You have to be positive, even if you don't like something.
• You have to communicate.  You have to listen and talk, and you have to use a nice tone.

At the end of the discussion, I asked them to distill the ideas about group work into keywords:

Conversations about September 11th

Dear Fifth Grade Families,

During these first couple days of school, each class had conversations about September 11th. We framed our conversations around the idea of community, and the students learned the story of what life was like at P.S. 234 and in our temporary homes after 9/11. We also talked about the outpouring of love and support we received from the world community. Our conversation also focused on the fact that the adults in our community made sure the children here were safe.

We watched an episode of “Reading Rainbow” that was filmed at P.S. 234. The episode was about how the TriBeCa community pulled together and began to heal, and also served as a way for the students at 234 to say thank you to all of the people who sent gifts, supplies and well wishes to the school during that difficult time.

There was much curiosity in our classrooms about September 11th. Students had questions about the event itself and expressed a lot of feelings about how important it is to come together as a community during a scary time to help each other feel better. As this topic is fresh in the minds of your children, we encourage you to continue this conversation at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

Thank you,

Arielle, Ed, Lauren & Sharon