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.

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

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.

Published Fantasy Pieces Around Fair Haven

Room 101's published fantasy pieces are hanging around town! Thanks to Jack M., Caroline, Harris, and their families for helping to hang these pieces! As always, we're so appreciative of Fair Haven businesses that are supportive of our writing work.

When you check out our fantasy pieces, be sure to scan the QR code hanging in front of each piece to hear the writer read aloud his or her "about the author." You may also want to take our pieces out (they're our most elaborated pieces so far this year) so that you can read the entire story, including the character cards or setting maps we included at the back of our pieces (most of our fantasy books had these, and we wanted to include them, too!).

Here's where you can find our pieces:

Tavolo - Ellie, Connor, Cameron, Jack S., Maia, Marcus, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina, Maisy, Braiden, Quinn, and James

Fairwinds - Harry, Patrick, and Caroline

River Road Books - Sophie, Jack M., Sal, and Maddie

Published Book Reviews

Room 101 has recently published book reviews on our class book review blog, Room 101's Must Reads. You can read our book reviews here: http://fourthgrade101bookreviews.blogspot.com.

We chose to review books that we have strong opinions about and knew well (i.e. in addition to having read all of the book we chose, we also had some writing about our reading in our reader's notebook that we used to begin to gather our ideas about the book). During this unit, we studied mentor texts (published book reviews), paying particular attention to the structure and language used in the book reviews. We learned that, in addition to the reviewer's general opinion, book reviews often include a partial summary, thoughts on the author's craft, quotes from the book, and a recommendation for the type of reader who will enjoy the book. 

Having just finished our Touch Typing class, we took the opportunity to type our published pieces for the first time this year. The class worked in the computer lab for one writing workshop period, typing in a document through their Google Drive accounts. Typing in Google Drive allowed students to finish publishing at home. 

We hope our reviews help you find your next book!

Published Personal Essays Around Fair Haven

We're excited to share that our personal essays have been hung around town! Thanks to Sal, Ellie, Maddie, and their families for helping to hang these pieces.

Each hanging piece also has a QR code in front of it. The QR codes are the black and white images that can be scanned with a smartphone (there are free apps to scan them). Once the QR code is scanned, you'll be sent to a link that will allow you to listen to the class read our six word essays.

Here's a breakdown of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Patrick, Harry, Sophie, Jack M., Sal, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina M., Maisy, Braiden, Quinn, Chrisina U., and James

Fairwinds - Ellie, Caroline, and Connor

River Road Books - Maddie, Jack S., Maia, and Marcus

We're so thankful to these Fair Haven businesses for allowing us the space to share our writing!

Six Word Essays

We recently published our personal essays. As part of our publishing, we wrote six word essays, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's six word memoir. Though six words may not sound difficult to write, this work required writers to synthesize weeks of essay work.

Please enjoy the video of our class reading our six word essays.

Realistic Fiction Pieces Around Fair Haven

We're excited to share that our realistic fiction pieces have been hung around town! Thanks to Caroline, Lucas, James, and their families for helping to hang these pieces.

Each hanging piece also has a QR code in front of it. The QR codes are the black and white images that can be scanned with a smartphone (there are free apps to scan them). Once the QR code is scanned, you'll be sent to a link that will allow you to listen to the writer read golden lines from his or her piece. Hearing the lines read aloud by the writer really brings the writing to life!

Golden lines were chosen, practiced, and recorded by the writer. The lines reflect the writing goals of each writer during this unit. Some of our goals were to use a variety of details (e.g. action, thought, dialogue, setting...) and to include sensory details and figurative language. (Some writers had the goal of add paragraphs more consistently throughout their piece, which won't be reflected in their recording.)

Here's a breakdown of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Jack S., Maia, Marcus, Harry, Patrick, Sophie, Jack M., Sal, Maddie, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina M., Maisy, and Braiden

Fairwinds - Quinn, Christina U., and James

River Road Books - Ellie, Caroline, Connor, and Cameron

We're so thankful to these Fair Haven businesses for allowing us the space to share our writing!

Personal Narratives around Fair Haven

We are excited to announce that our first published pieces, our personal narratives, are hanging in local Fair Haven businesses. Thanks so much to Tavolo, Fairwinds, and River Road Books for so generously giving us space to share our pieces with a wider audience!


Here's a breakdown of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Ellie, Caroline, Connor, Cameron, Jack S., Maia, Marcus, Harry, Patrick, Sophie, Jack M., Megan, Maddie, Harris, Sal, and Lily

Fairwinds - Lucas, Christina M., and Maisy

River Road Books - Quinn, Braiden, Christina U., and James


At the end of each unit, we'll swap out the published pieces and update you with where each writer's piece can be found.

We hope that you're able to stop by and read our class's writing soon!

pieces hanging at Tavolo

pieces hanging at Fairwinds

pieces hanging at River Road Books

one week in!

Our first week was a busy one! Across the week, we began to work on creating a classroom environment that will help us all be successful. We thought about what we value as individuals, our expectations of ourselves and others, and created a class agreement.

We've also dug right in to our work. We learned how to choose just right books, began reading books (many classmates have finished at least one book already!), started a list of Burning Story Ideas in our writer's notebooks, and took a math pre-assessment.

We ended the week by talking about how we've already grown since the first week of school and had our notebook decorating party and first Motion and Design challenge in science. The video below includes some photos from our notebook decorating party and the science challenge.

The Flying Bird by William

"Clunk" the window goes as everyone sees a bird fall to the ground. Our teacher goes out, grabs the bird, and puts it in a tissue box on our window sill.

Beating fast, the bird's heart beats. The bird stands up and flies away. Everyone is happy for the bird that visited Room 101 that day.

artwork by Aloka, showing the bird in the tissue box on our window sill

Poems in the Making by Mac

Poems, Poems in the making. In class we were recently making poetry books. The whole class was working really  hard. So was I. It was very hard work, too.

The video above contains photos of our class's poetry anthology covers taken by Mac. It's set to Some Nights by FUN, a song chosen by Mac for the video.

Book Reviews

Room 101 published book reviews a few weeks ago. You can find our published reviews on our book review blog, Room 101's Must Reads: http://fourthgrade101bookreviews.blogspot.com/. Maybe your next read is hiding in one of our reviews!

Fantasy Fun by Alex

Us kids in Room 101 do writing celebrations like last week when we just finished fantasy and we had a celebration. It was really fun to read other kids' stories and learn a lot of new things. Some of the things we learned were how to write in third person and how to use dialogue, paragraphs, tiny actions, and punctuation.

In the video above, Alex shares some photos of parts of our published fantasy pieces and names the writing work that she sees in that part of the piece.

Vocabulary by Arabella

In writing, we have these special words like grit and charred and lots of others. We have hand motions for the words. We have lots of different hand motions. We get a lot of new words and when Mrs. Mills or Mrs. Barnett don't know hand motions for the word, it's up to the students to come up with them, which happens a lot. A student came up with the hand motion for grit. 

Sometimes we play this game for the words during snack where someone does the motion and people guess what the word is that goes with that motion. The student doing it for the class calls on a person who knows the answer. This game is really fun. We get to play it a lot.

If you want to see some of the words, watch my video. There will be two people in the video with me. We are going to say the word and do the motion. We're going to say the word first and then do the motion and describe the word. So please watch the video :)!

Note from the teachers: in the video above, Arabella, Allie, and Alex demonstrate the motions for some of our vocabulary words.

Independent Projects by Bridget

Independent projects are all about, well, you can do anything. You can do comics, interviews, plays, and stories. We do them during writing and it's super fun.  You get to talk and talk about what you are doing.

I am doing an interview and it is fun. I walk around and ask people questions.

First, you get a proposal and fill it out. These are some of the things we do on a proposal. First, you write what genre and topic you will do then you write how you will use your writer's notebook. After that you write what your mentor text will be then you write when you will be done. And that's how to do an independent project.

Note from the teachers: the video above was created by Bridget to showcase some of the independent project work going on in our room.

Six Word Essays

Last week we published and celebrated our essays. Part of our celebration included writing our essays as six word essays, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's six-word memoir.

Writing our essays in six words was challenging. It required us to do the hard work of determining importance and synthesis of several week's worth of writing.

Things Room 101 Is Thankful For

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, we published a class poem titled Things Room 101 Is Thankful For. Our poem is a list poem, inspired by Georgia Heard's Falling Down the Page, and used parts of the thankful lists we've been keeping in our writer's notebooks for the last week and a half.

 The published poem hanging outside our classroom door.

Writers in our room chose items off their thankful list, decided what kind of punctuation they'd want to include within and at the end of their line, and also made decisions about where to place their line (their sentence strip) in relation to the line above theirs in the poem.

Please enjoy the video below, which includes the sound of our first-read of the poem (turn your volume up:) and photos of each line as they were added to the poem.

Room 101 feels like there is a lot to be thankful for and we hope you do, too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thirteen Ways of Getting Through a Hurricane

Hey Fourth Graders (and Mrs. Barnett!),

How are you doing? I've been thinking about you all week, wondering how you're doing. I (probably obviously, since I'm able to do this blog post), have power back, and am wishing, wishing, wishing it back on in Fair Haven for you all.

I'm sure you have Burning Story Ideas you've been adding to your WNB at home, that you've been enjoying the unexpected time with your family and friends. I'm anxious to get back to school and hear your stories.

Some people on Facebook update their status each day in November with something they're thankful for. We'll each start our own thankful list in our WNB as soon as we're back (you can, of course, start it before we're back if you want!).

Until then, though, I wanted to share a poem that I've been working on. Coreen, my best friend, suggested that we use a poem called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens as a mentor to write our own poems about how we've gotten through the blackout and Hurricane Sandy.

So, I'm including my poem at the end of this post- maybe we'll all write our own next week as a writing homework. It would be fun to see how we all got through this hurricane.

See you soon!

Thirteen Ways of Getting Through a Hurricane

Invite neighbors over

who you’ve meant to have over,

but haven’t yet,

and play card games

by the candlelight.

Sleep in.

Pull all the candles out,

from every drawer

and cabinet

and shelf

and move them around with you,

from kitchen to family room,

to light your way.

Make two trips to 711 to call family:

Cell phones aren’t working.

All’s ok.

Use spaghetti noodles

to light the gas stove

and cook whatever’s

thawed in the freezer

(it will be bad by tomorrow).

Download new books

on your kindle

and read them

under two blankets

because it’s chilly

without the heat.

Hold your breath

and scrub

fast,

fast,

fast,

in an ice cold shower.

Then sprint back

to the aforementioned

two blankets.

Nap.

Take walks through town.

When the nights seem

to be creeping by,

move to Derek’s Jeep,

charge phones

(still not working, but just in case…),

plug the laptop in,

and watch Parenthood episodes.

Take a trip to Sickles

and stock up on “necessities”:

salad,

turkey sloppy joe's,

mashed potatoes,

sandwich,

caramel chocolate popcorn.

Do a celebration dance

when the power

comes

back

on.