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!!

 

Reading Celebration by Serafina

Our teacher, Mrs.Mills, decided we do a Reading Celebration by acting out a part we read in our partner reading book. When Mrs. Mills said acting I thought of all the funny things in my book. Everybody loves reading in our class. Some of the things people acted out were funny but everybody thought the coolest and funniest one was Dylan’s. It was fun acting out parts in our books and most partners had a lesson to learn from the part they acted, like to never give up. Everybody's story was different and had all different lessons. Also, for every partnership that finished acting, everybody else gave them a nice round of applause. Some of the partnerships didn’t just act like people, as in Stone Fox they were dogs. Acting out parts in our books was fun, scary, and exciting and also fun to watch. Our class did very well on our acting celebration.

Knollwood Voice Magazine by Georgia

Kids are starting on the first Knollwood Voice magazine. Kids are joining faster than you can count! It is a lot of fun and an amazing way to spend your recess.  You could go as an artist for the cover or inside of the magazine. You could also write stories or be an editor. Almost anything you can think of they have it! And it's kind of like free time in kindergarten. If you have an idea, go for it! I think Knollwood Voice is amazing and it just started.You should join Knollwood Voice!

Last year's Knollwood Voice

Learning about Rising Stars of Inferences Post-Its by Lauren

When you're reading your just right book, you should put post-its in your book to have deeper thinking about your reading. Post-its are meant for you to stop and jot down what you are thinking. When you have longer thoughts, you write thoughts down in your reader's notebook. For example, you can do an EEG or you can stop and sketch or write long off of a idea. But when you do post-its those are for you to stop and jot your ideas, you should have evidence from the text or evidence from the book. 

If your goal is to write a 1 star post, it states an idea about the characters or it says an idea. In the book Sheila Rae's Peppermint Stick, for example, I could write “Sheila is rude” or “Sheila loves her peppermint stick”. If you’re ever stuck on how to start, you can use "I think…" or "________ is feeling…" or "______ is the kind of person who...."

If your goal is to write a 2 star post-it in your book, you should support the idea with evidence of words and actions like “Sheila got a chair and then she got 4 huge big books and then climbed up on it and stood on her tippy toes." To get started you can use "I think this because...and a part of the text that shows this is..."" and also… and…."

If your goal  is a 3 star post-it you should support ideas with more than one piece of evidence of words and actions. For example if my goal was to write a 3 star post-it, I would write “Sheila is rude because she keeps teasing her little sister. For example, she said "I will give you some if you can guess how many stripes it has," and she would not give her the peppermint stick." 

If my goal is to  write a 4 star post-it, I would write ideas about characters relationships using specific evidence in the text. For example I could write “Sheila Rae LOVES her peppermint stick. I know this because in the text it says Sheila Rae had a peppermint stick it was long shiny and had stripes she loved it and she did not want give some to her sister. I know this because she made obstacles for her sister to have some. Sheila Rae loves her peppermint stick because in the text it says, "Sheila Rae held the peppermint stick close to her body."" To get started you can use: "__________ and _________ are similar/different because...also..." or "__________ is ibn the story because.../____________ is in the story to show..."

 Rising Stars of Inference Poster

 An example of writing about our reading

Reader's notebook where you can sort your post-its and do other writing about your reading

(The photos above were taken and captioned by Lauren for her blog post.)

first published pieces are up around town!

Our first published pieces have been hung around town! You can find our published personal narratives at Tavolo, Fairwinds, and River Road Books. We're so lucky to have places in town that value our writing and allow us to hang it to share with others!

Personal narratives are true stories from our lives. In this unit, we worked hard to write in the moment, rather than a summary, using details like tiny actions, dialogue, setting, and inner thought. We set goals for our writing at the beginning of the unit, choosing one of the three goals: writing a strong lead, using a storytelling voice, or elaborating (stretching out) the heart of our story. Comparing the personal narrative on demand that we wrote on the first day of school with our published piece and on demand at the end of the unit, one month later, showed so much growth for us already as writers!

Here's a break down of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Emma, Antonio, Vivian, Jackson, Georgia, Annie, Matt, Megan, Ben, Alex, Dylan, and Patrick
Fairwinds - Evan, Eva, Caroline, Serafina, and RJ
River Road Books* - Ryan, Scarlett, Will, and Lauren

*pieces at River Road Books will be up by the end of next week. They're doing some renovations on Monday and thought it would be best for us to wait to hang them so that our pieces aren't damaged.

We hope you're able to visit the place hosting your piece, but also make it to the other places to read our classmates' pieces.

Mining Songs by Caroline

There have been many things going on during social studies. We have lately been doing a lot of fun projects. I am going to tell you about one of them. It's called mining songs.

So first, we picked a tune to go along with our song. For example, my group picked Fancy. Next, Mrs. Mills (our teacher) gave us a text all about the miners and their lives and our group read the text together. After that, the groups made up a song that had words that matched what the text said so the song told about the miners and their life. Finally, we rehearsed our songs until they felt comfortable. The last step was to add a little actions to the song and show them to the class.

 

Precepts by Sal

Precepts are important because it's like a motto. It's a ground rule. It's something you live by.

They're also important because they tell you what to do. Not in a bossy way like your hockey coach, but a rule to follow. And I basically just said the same thing twice, didn't I?

And that's why precepts are important. Stay classy Jersey Shore.

The video below is of our class precepts.

  The video above includes posters of student-written precepts being read aloud by the student author. The class precepts were inspired by one of our favorite books this year, Wonder by RJ Palaccio. We've also just finished reading the companion to Wonder, The Julian Chapter. We highly recommend it for children and adults. It's a story you'll never forget. 

Journalism Celebration by Lucas

As the Tuesday rolls on, the Journalism celebration will take air at 9:30. When the celebration starts, all of the students are going to share all of the checklists and strategies to help us over the journalism unit. The students will send out a letter to invite their parents to see if they would go. Now that everybody is coming, it will be a great party. After they show their videos, the students will give the parents a good-bye and the students will get back to work.

The videos below are from the celebration. We are telling about a certain piece. Mine was about a 3 year old kid that had a sick dribble and an awesome bike. He also could slide down the slides at exhilarating speeds.

Author Posters by Marcus

Our author posters are important because they teach us what techniques the authors like to use. For example, an author I was studying used a lot of comparison & surprising fact or statistics.

The authors also teach by using goals. Goals are goals for the techniques. For example, help the reader grasp an abstract the idea (or describe/ show the scale/ parts of something).

Here are some pics of the author posters that we did in reading in fourth grade:

The photos in the video above were taken by Marcus during our nonfiction author study celebration. Each book club made a chart to teach the class about techniques commonly used by the author they studied and the goals for each of the techniques. Marcus compiled the photos into the video.

Fourth Grade Recess By Megan

Every day at lunch and recess time everyone likes to go outside and play games. Most of the kids at recess like to play 4-square. 4-square is a very fun game to play. For some people, it gets tempting to play when you get out or when you get someone else out.

Sometimes when people get really competitive and throw ''cherry bombs," it usually goes over the fence - and goes under cars!

Ralph Fletcher Visits Knollwood School By James

Ralph Fletcher came to Fair Haven Knollwood School in NJ.  He taught everybody in the school his writing strategies and how useless things can turn into great ideas.  For example, when he was a kid he wrote down the things he was scared of and he could write a poem out of each one of them.

He mostly talked about his childhood and how he had 8 siblings.  One of them died in a car crash.

As Mr. Fletcher spoke kids wrote down what he said and what he did as a writer.  Most people are looking forward to using these strategies.

 kids writing down Ralph's strategies

 

Ralph showing the kids some of his books

Knollwood Times by Braiden

A few weeks ago we started a journalism unit. I can see most of our class loves this unit.

I like: 1. we publish every day, 2. it's fun, 3. it's just...GREAT!

We have learned the four 4'ws - who, what, where, and when. We have learned to eliminate the I-voice (the I-voice is speaking in 1st person) and use 3rd person, we have also learned so much more.

We all have written great stories and our first story Mrs. Mills used as an example was awesome.

This is the best unit and I think we are writing amazing stories.

Oh, and my signature way to end my stories...

Stay classy, New Jersey.

This is the journalist checklist. We try to use all the things on the checklist in our stories.

This chart shows phrases and words that we should try to use in the news stories we write.

These are some of the amazing news stories kids wrote and chose as their piece for the celebration.

Angle Tangle Game by Lily

The Angle Tangle math game is when you and your opponent draw a random angle without measuring and your opponent quickly measures your angle. Then you measure the angle to make sure your opponent's answer is right, if your opponent's answer is not correct tell your opponent the right answer and tell her/him how you got the correct answer. You & the opponent switch turns. The object of the game is to get one degree off or completely right, that counts as right.

Glee Club by Sophie

In Glee Club, we prepare songs. To do this, we get into groups (altos and sopranos). Mr. Mottern helps each section with their part of the song.

After we get used to our part, the altos and sopranos sing together.

After all of these ups and downs, singing with each other, we all feel like we all feel like a wonderful, big family.

In the concert, every girl (and one boy) sing their hearts out (not really that would hurt), feeling like on the stage, singing, is the place where we belong.

The links below will let you listen to the last concert we had.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2189083-all-of-me

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2189085-simple-gifts

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2189100-wonderwall

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2189114-best-of-2012-mash-up

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2189147-when-you-believe