Personal Essays Hanging Around Town

Our second published pieces of the year - our personal essays - are now up around town! You'll find a breakdown of whose pieces are hanging where below.

Each essayist chose a goal for the unit from three of the big focuses we had as a class: writing a strong introduction, organizing in paragraphs, or elaborating our essays by including anecdotes and examples to support our ideas. While each essayist had one goal in particular, you'll find evidence of all three goals in each of the pieces you read.

We used mentor texts (published essays) to help us write strong introductions and conclusions, sometimes mimicking the phrasing or craft moves (e.g. making an interesting comparison or including our experiences with our topic) that the mentor texts used in their introductions and conclusions. Using mentor texts in this way helps push us to try new things as writers. We also studied anecdotes in mentor texts and noticed that many of the craft moves we learned in personal narrative (like, dialogue, inner thought, and tiny actions) can still be used in our essays to support our thesis idea.

At the end of our unit, we wrote six word essays, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's six word memoir. This required us to synthesize our essay; after several weeks of elaborating, we had to get down to the heart of what we were trying to say across many paragraphs, and sometimes pages, and say it in just six words. This work is more challenging than it first appears! You can find our six word essays hanging outside of Room 101.

Here's where you can find our pieces (by the end of the year, we'll all have been shared in each place, but we will have some repeats of where you'll find our piece along the way):

Tavolo - Will, Caroline, Evan, Lauren, Scarlett, RJ, Ryan, Eva, Jackson, Matt, Antonio, and Emma

River Road Books - Vivian, Alex, Patrick, and Ben

Fairwinds - Georgia, Megan, Dylan, Annie, and Serafina

What We Do in Gym Class by Jackson

One thing that we do in gym is play games like capture the flag, poison ball, or knock out. Another thing we do in gym is play sports like basketball, or soccer. We also have strength tests like when we do pull-ups and how many seconds you stay on is your score.

One thing we do in gym is play games like capture the flag, poison ball, or knock out. In case you don't know how to play capture the flag at Knollwood, you put some footballs in the ball boxes on each sides and you make teams. Each team has to get to each ball box before getting tagged in order to get a point and then run back without being tagged again. There are jails, too, that if you tag someone, that's where they go. The people from the team that has the person in jail, one of them has to run without being tagged, take one of the people from jail, and you both have to raise your hand and walk back so the people on the other team know that they can't tag you.

Another thing that we do in gym is play poison ball. Poison ball is pretty much like dodge ball but whoever's side has the ball on it last loses.

We also have strength tests like when we pick ourselves up on the pull-up bar and how many seconds you stay on is your score. Another strength test we have is the pacer test when there is a voice telling you what to do when it dings and you take it to the next line of the gym. You keep doing that until you get tired or don't make it to the side before it dings and how many times you get to the other side is your score.

click here to see what our gym teacher says about gym

The Fourth Grade Field Trip by Matt

October 24, 2014 was the big fourth grade field trip. We went to the Liberty Science Center. I woke up at 6:30 and I was very tired. We went to school at 7:30 and the buses left soon after. Everyone was excited to go. I got to sit next to my best friend Evan. The trip took 1 hour and 15 minutes, it felt like 45 minutes.

When we arrived we got into our groups and started wandering around.  We did the Touch Tunnel, we learned about buildings and lakes and fish.  We watched an I-Max movie.  We learned about the Hudson River and we learned about skyscrapers.

My favorite thing was the I-Max movie, it was about the world we can’t see, for example heat waves, microscopic bugs and energy waves. It was very interesting.

This was probably one of the best field trips I've ever experienced.  I think everyone should visit the Liberty Science Center because it is really fun.

The photos below were chosen by Matt from the Liberty Science Center website (http://lsc.org/).

Owen's Marshmallow Chick by RJ

This is a book that I recorded using iMovie. iMovie is an app that lets you take pictures then record yourself and stretch the picture to match the words. We sent the video to a kindergarten class so they can read along.

Writing Celebration Time by Evan

We do writing celebrations when we are finished with a unit.  At writing celebrations, we first do a writing reflection for ourselves. Then we do a museum walk around the classroom to look at other people's writing. There is usually a stack of post-its in the middle of each table so we can take one and write a compliment about the students' writing.

At times, we search for and read our writing partner's published piece and we take a post-it from the center of the table and write what we think is their golden line.  A golden line is a line that you think is one of the best lines in their story.  We may also sing the song Celebration Time because it is time to celebrate our writing achievements.

My favorite part of the celebration of our writing pieces is when we write down our partner's golden line because it shows that we are enjoying each other's work. It also shows that my story was interesting to them.

Overall, I enjoy writing celebration time and I am very eager to finish the next unit so we can celebrate all of our good work again!

 This is a comment about your writing.

 This is a reflection that you do for your writing.

This is what a writing piece looks like.

The photos above were taken and captioned by Evan.

Pyramid Solitaire by Patrick

I play Pyramid Solitaire when I finished all my math. In the game you try to find two cards that equal ten. The game can sometimes be quick. Usually the game will take long. In this video I will show you how to play Pyramid Solitaire. Hopefully you will learn how to play the game after this video. After watching the video you may see that Pyramid Solitaire is not easy. It is a good way to entertain yourself if you are alone.

 

Polygon Pair Up by Ryan

In room 101 we play many math games. My personal favorite is Polygon Pair Up. Polygon Pair Up is a geometrical game that has to do with shapes and their properties. I think it is fun because it gives a good brain test or challenge. It also is also almost a social activity because you are playing with one of your classmates. The point of Polygon Pair Up is to get as many matches as you can.There are yellow cards and blue cards.On the yellow cards are shapes and on the blue, properties. You will have to find out the rest and how to play in the video below!!