Powerful Poetry Shines at Our Annual Poetry Night

On the evening of February 19th, our fifth grade poets celebrated their remarkable work at our annual Poetry Night. This special event, set at the Barnes & Noble in Westport, marked the culmination of a 5 week unit that allowed us to examine and craft numerous forms of poetry. Throughout this unit, we continued to explore an essential question:

Why do we write poetry? Is it to entertain? To reflect? To educate? To meditate? To empower?

Our fifth graders played with rhythm and humor in their limericks, imagery and word choice in their haikus and acrostics, and the parts of speech in their cinquains and diamantes. After analyzing a compilation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches, these writers identified powerful and inspiring terminology and turned those into passionate found poems. We explored the power of self-reflection, reading Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” along with a number of other exemplary autobiographical poems. Our poets looked within to consider what makes them unique, special, and perfectly imperfect, and then used figurative language to illustrate their complexity. Those “I Am” poems will serve as artist statements for their self portraits that grace our halls. We also considered how poetry can serve as a call to action. These students’ powerful protest poems will inform the arpilleras they are creating in Visual Arts, inspired by the bold and empowered female poets and artists of Pinochet’s Chile. Finally, we experimented with rhyme, imitation, and whimsy by crafting playful poems inspired by Jack Prelutsky’s, “Bleezer’s Ice Cream.” Get ready to be WOWed by their rhyming skills! In total, during our Poetry unit these writers penned 363 original poems.

While many of the poems these students crafted allowed them to simply play around with rhyme and humor, others required a great deal of tenacity and introspection. This special collection of work should warm your souls, stir emotions, and inspire your minds – they certainly made for a moving and memorable evening!

Perfecting our Persuasive Practice!

In our Opinion & Persuasive Writing Unit, fifth grade writers engaged in thought-provoking debates, learned how to construct a reasoned and organized essay, and defended their positions in front of their peers. In order to best consider how to persuade, we first explored how to appeal to an audience’s ethos (admiration), pathos (emotions), logos (logic), and kairos (effective timing) by analyzing commercials. What persuasive appeal is used in that famous Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial? What about Apple’s iPhone 11 ad? Coca Cola’s seasonal Santa spots?

To get the creativity flowing, students were assigned a number of “Would You Rather” scenarios; after their quick writes were complete, lively banter ensued as points and counterpoints exploded around the room. It was a funny and high-energy way to dip our toes into the world of opinion writing. Would you rather time travel 50 years into the future or 50 years into the past? Would you rather live in Narnia or attend school at Hogwarts?

Students then participated in a silent Persuasive Gallery Walk. Various posters around the room asked them to consider a number of meaty issues and then reply directly on the paper. This was a compelling and reflective way to organize beliefs in a safe and indirect way. Questions like, “Should football be banned?” and “Do violent video games create more violent kids?” made the fifth graders pause and consider a number of perspectives on a given topic, which was enhanced by having the ability to see their peers’ responses as well.

Finally, the students were asked to pick a topic that they were passionate about. This could be one that we had discussed previously or something new and authentic to their interests. Our writers were then guided through crafting persuasive essays. Through the use of writing organizers, templates, and outside research, effective essays were composed around a wide range of issues: presidential term limits, single-use plastics, screen time for kids, and more! To conclude our unit, all students were tasked with sharing their persuasive arguments to the class using their “PVLEGS” skills – poise, voice, life, eye contact, gestures, and speed. The fifth graders relished the opportunity to have meaningful mini-debates around issues they care about, and many gained the added reward of changing a few hearts and minds in the process!

Seize the Day!

Today in 5th grade performing arts we had a great time adding movement to a song we have been working on called “Seize the Day.” This song is from a Broadway show called Newsies, where the paper boys are about to go on strike! There is am amazing dance sequence that happens in the middle of this song where the actors use newspapers under their feet to enhance their moves. The 5th graders learned a part of this dance today and then tried out using paper under our feet! It was very challenging but very fun!

Mi Familia

Family trees are an effective way of working with family vocabulary. Students in 5th grade created posters and labeled their family members in Spanish. They practiced their pronunciation by talking about the relationship between family members. It was a fun activity!!

Gator Grammar Greatness

Fifth grade writers have been practicing their grammar skills each and every week using mentor sentences. Instead of the grammar worksheets of yesteryear, students get to dissect exemplar sentences using magnetic manipulatives and their custom “Gator Grammar” workbooks. This practice helps solidify grammatical features and vocabulary, making it part of the natural language of our classroom. Moreover, these mentor sentences push our writers to expand their syntactic understanding and usage.

Each Monday, a new sentence is introduced to the class; students receive a sentence strip to add to their workbook, and it is also written on our Sentence Study whiteboard. We then analyze it, looking for parts of speech, point of view, figurative language, punctuation, and more. The fifth graders get quite competitive when it’s time to label our sentence on the whiteboard!

“Is ‘green’ a noun or an adjective?”

“Wait, I see alliteration!”

“There are 3 independent clauses in that sentence – it must be a compound sentence!”

Midweek, students are tasked with revising our mentor sentence. This means adding, removing, moving, or substituting words to make the sentence more descriptive or interesting – but not changing the overall meaning of the example. This revision process helps reinforce vocabulary skills and the parts of speech.

We conclude each week by crafting our own imitations of the mentor sentence. Students must use the same sentence structure as the example, but create their own sentences. This task requires the writers to not simply revise or edit – they must synthesize what they have learned about the mentor sentence and produce something novel and inspired. These student-generated imitation sentences are then used to determine our weekly “featured writers.” Using anonymous polling and teacher discretion, the top 2 sentences in each Writing Seminar class are honored on our “Featured Writers” bulletin board each week. The students love to hear what their classmates have constructed. More importantly, their own writing – and writing confidence – has grown tremendously through the analysis, evaluation, revision, and application skills they’ve gained through this dynamic process.

Not So Spooky Stories Sizzle at Bonfire Night!

Fifth grade writers spent most of October working on “Not So Spooky Stories” in our narrative writing unit. We learned about the five story elements – plot, character, conflict, theme, and setting – with a special focus on a well-sequenced plot. Students explored how various dialogue types could help further their story telling, and practiced writing effective figurative language that would add to their tales.

The fifth graders visited with Mrs. Engelke’s second grade class on multiple occasions, as they were also working on autumnally-themed stories. During these collaborations, the older students taught their “buddies” about story mapping, plot, and the importance of descriptive details. The two classes came together to enjoy a storytelling performance with Ms. Karen Hall, where we gained insight on how to best share our tales to an audience. They practiced reading and editing their tales with the second graders, who provided lots of meaningful feedback to our fifth grade writers!

Our culminating event was our annual Bonfire Night, where our storytellers shared their tales amongst family and friends. While the weather did not cooperate, we enjoyed a “virtual” bonfire in the gym – replete with hot cider, cushy seating, campfire treats, and a burning fire on the big screen! It was a wonderful evening filled with the magic of the season!