Thursday, February 16, 2023

Poetry Cafe

Roses are red, violets are blue. Miss Klipfel's Class says, Thank you! Thank you all for attending and helping make our poetry cafe a HUGE success. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your warm smiles, feverish snaps, and uncontainable chuckles. Without our wonderful audience, our poetry cafe wouldn't have been such a success. Congratulations to all the 4th graders for taking a risk performing their poems, sharing their musical abilities, artistic skills, and hidden talents. Impressive is an understatement! We also can't thank you enough for your kind words, emails, and comments of encouragement. We hope the rest of your February is filled with chocolates, hearts, and lots of love. Make sure to check out all our published poems here:

Friday, February 10, 2023

Klipper Bowl V

Are you ready for some fffooooootball? 4th graders were geared up and ready to go Friday for the fifth annual Klipper Bowl. Teams were introduced while blasting their team chosen song, then we completed warm-up stretches, huddled up for last minute strategies and then stood for the national anthem. Next up was our coin toss for kickoff return placement. Lucky teams who guessed the coin toss correctly had a 20-yard kickoff return while others started on the 10-yard line. Using perseverance and grit, teams quickly caught up.
Teams then ran "plays" from their playbook to gain yardage on the field. "Plays" included using different forms of texts (articles, media, poems, etc.) and completing activities. Players learned about who invented football and completed a comprehension activity worth 50 yards.  Teams read a Wonderoplois article explaining what makes the Super Bowl so super and then completed a Google form for 30 yards. Teams could choose to run a play and apply all their figurative language knowledge to create football similes, metaphors, alliterations, personifications and onomatopoeias. 

The plays worth the most yards involved correctly placing team logos for all the Southeast region teams (yes, we have been learning all about the Southeast in Social Studies). Other plays included reading a passage about Tom Brady, learning about the history of the Super Bowl, placing fraction footballs on the correct place on the field, and reading a football poem to determine the mood and purpose all for different amounts of yards.  
Once teams correctly completed a play, they brought it to Referee Klipfel for the final check and to advance on the field. After gaining enough yardage to make it down the field, teams scored a touchdown! Complete with touchdown dances! Teams then got to throw for point conversions. Team cooperation and good sportsmanship earned extra yards or kicks for points at ANY time throughout the game. "Good job", "keep working hard", and other forms of encouragement were heard around the field all day. No yellow flags needed to be thrown.
Referee Klipfel and teams had one SUPER day! Klipper Bowl V is complete so now onto baseball season.