Poetry Cafe

Roses are red, violets are blue. Miss Klipfel's Class says, Happy Valentine's Day to you! Thank you all for attending and helping make our poetry cafe a HUGE success. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your delicious donations, 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 and sharing their musical 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 was filled with chocolates, hearts and lots of love.   

World Read Aloud Day

Friday, February 1st, marked Lit World's campaign for sharing the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories. Room 216 had an extra special treat for World Read Aloud Day and was able to skype with two different published authors.

Over the last few weeks, our shared class read aloud has been Abby Cooper's book Sticks & Stones so we were extra excited to meet with her. We were able to ask questions and gain more insight into her characters. We even learned more about these mysterious blue notes we've been reading about in our story and where her inspiration came from. Don't worry she didn't give anything away.

We also met with Rebecca Donnelly and loved hearing a portion of her book How to Stage a Catastrophe. Her novel is written as the script of a play which tied perfectly to our comparison in our poetry unit. We were able to get an insight into her publishing a book and got to ask questions about the process. 

This year we decided to take Lit World's mission on and practice our own reading aloud. With books in hand, we headed down to the Howe-Manning Preschool and visited Mrs. McElroy's class. 4th graders practiced their fluency skills and read their favorite picture books aloud. 

It’s hard to imagine a more delightful holiday than World Read Aloud Day, “to celebrate the power of words and create a community of readers taking action to show the world that the right to literacy belongs to all people.” Never underestimate the power of reading aloud with your children.

Super Klip-Bowl I

Are you ready for some fffooooootball? 4th graders were geared up and ready to go Friday for the first ever inaugural Super Klip-Bowl. After warm-up stretches, teams huddled up to devise their game plan and come up with a team name. Next up was our coin toss with Commissioner Bryson. 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 crossword worth 40 yards.  Teams read a Wonderoplois article explaining what makes the Super Bowl so super and then completed a Google form for 25 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 play worth the most yards involved correctly placing team logos for all the Northeast and Southeast region teams (yes, we have been learning all about the Northeast and Southeast in Social Studies). Other plays included reading a passage about Tom Brady, learning about the history of the Super Bowl, and reading a football poem to determine the mood and purpose of the poem, 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! Referee Klipfel blew the whistle and yes we all threw our hands in the air to yell, "Touchdown!" Teams then got to shoot from two different marked spots for 1 or 2 extra points. Team cooperation and good sportsmanship earned extra yards or shots 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! Now off to Atlanta...

LET'S GO PATS!