Struggling

So what does it look like when a student is struggling with a certain type of poem? Ms. Leom walks around as students write and monitors student progress. She redirects and offers strategies and suggestions to support student success.

Sometimes students need or want more help. Ms. Leom will pull or students may choose to join her to work in a small group. Her table is surrounded, students are encouraged to help each other, and they are carefully monitored to make sure they are on track themselves.

When we were writing Creature Alliteration poems, Ms. Leom suggested students use a dictionary to help find alliterating (words that repeat the same beginning sound) words. Sometimes that is overwhelming and too much information for students. So she would make a list of Adjectives (describing words), Verbs (action words), and Nouns to help students access ideas quickly.

Students had ninety minutes to write two creature alliteration poems. The time was split over two days. In addition, students had a half hour to "catch up" on their poetry notebooks. 

Ms. Leom is also conferencing (meeting) with students and helping with spelling corrections (by writing the correct spellings on sticky notes for students to fix) and giving reminders for poetry pages formating: type of poem, title, byline, and more.

 

Students have many opportunities to be successful, and we are actively trying to limit the struggling within class using a variety of strategies and active support.

Modeling

As we are learning about different styles of poems, our learning is very carefully developed in class. Students have access to their own paper copy of the poetry packet. It is also on Edmodo, and whatever style we are highlighting that day is on the smart board in front of class.

When each poem is introduced, we read the introduction about the poem. We look at the format. Then we read examples. Together, in class, we write that style of poem on the board, side-by-side with the information sheet. Ms. Leom points out the features the poem should have.

Here are the screenshots from the last two poetry styles we wrote together in class. Ms. Leom goes through each of these steps with each class, so what is posted below would only represent the work of half the students.

Trimble Park

On Friday April 21, we walked to Trimble Park for our latest reward.

When my heart remembers this school year, these will be the moments that I will treasure. The smiles, the fresh air, the sunshine, the energy, the friendships, these amazing kids ... my heart is full.

How We Roll

Around the state, at 1:45 on the third Thursday of April, the sirens go off, and we all demonstrate what it would look like during a tornado warning.

That's how we roll.

Severe Weather

Nationally, the third week of April is Severe Weather Awareness. In fourth grade reading, we are reading about some severe weather.

Students are reviewing the features of nonfiction texts: headings, pictures, captions, bolded words, italics, and more. Students need to answer questions on the topics of flash flooding, thunderstorms, tornadoes, EAS and NOAA, and heat emergencies. The text is available on Edmodo, and students are using pencil and paper to record their learning.

Ms. Leom's Flex Reading students are doing an extension activity for severe weather. They are researching from an on-line encyclopedia, a second resource, and they are creating a presentation of about severe weather. We will use the air-server to project their learning on the smart board and present their work.

Mod-Podge

We are creating our Poetry Book covers today in class. Ms. Leom started writing about it in the weekly newsletter and talking with students in March. The materials were due on Thursday April 13th. Half the class wasn't prepared. So we set a new date, April 18th. Ms. Leom wasn't available that day. Today, April 19th is the perfect day to mod-podge.

This is a graded part of the poetry unit, to have students experience a new process, and to make their notebook something special.

Poetry

Last week we started our poetry unit. We started by setting up our notebook. Everything is carefully laid out and modeled.

Students are working on writing different types of poems in class. We have learned about acrostic, alphabet alliteration, cinquain, and today, color poems. Each class wrote a color poem together.

Memorizing

On May 9th, we will have have Poetry Cafe (no times are known as this post is being written), and students will stand on Dahlager Theater stage and recite their memorized poems. Students have a copy in their Poetry Notebooks and wrote a second copy to bring home. Students were encouraged to read through the poem and practice every morning and every night. This week, we started our practice in class.

Students sat in chairs, "knee to knee". They each read their poem to their partner. Then they whisper read their poem to themselves. Then they read their poem a second time.

 We will practice in a variety of ways. We have started memorizing ...