Here are a few claymation movies from Mr. H/Mrs. B’s literature class on the theme of tolerance:

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These are writing prompts for Writing Workshop. If you can show you still have every prompt from this year, then you can be in the running for a fun award during the all-school assembly:

1. Writing History — You wrote about a piece of writing that you really enjoyed writing, and a piece of writing that you did not enjoy. And you explained why and why not. (Sept. 5 )
2. Harris Burdick Story — You wrote a short story, using the Harris Burdick illustrations as your source of inspiration. (Sept. 8 )
3. Vehicle of the Future — You created an illustration of a car of the future that does not run on gas or oil or any other fossil fuels. Your picture has expository writing — labels and a sentence or so about your car. (Sept. 9 )
4. BioPoem Rough Draft — This is where you did the first version of your BioPoem project. (Sept. 9 )
5. Short Story Titles — You generated a brainstormed list of three to five creative titles to possible short stories and then wrote a short story. (Sept. 12 )
6. Short Story — You one of the student-generated titles and wrote a short story. (Sept. 16 )
7. WW Comic — You used at least three Wordly Wise words from Lesson One in a comic strip. (Sept. 17 )
8. Freewrite — You had time to write what you wanted or to go back and follow up and finish a prompt. (Sept. 19 )
9. Design a Treehouse — You drew an imaginary treehouse and labeled the parts. (Sept. 24 )
10. Jungle Adventure — You put a picture story in the right sequence and then wrote a short story in first person narrative. (Sept. 24 )
11. Ask the Candidates — You drew a comic strip in which you posed an important question for the presidential candidates. (Sept. 26 )
12. Create a Character — You invented a fictional character that may be used in an upcoming Adventure Short Story project. (Sept. 29 )
13. Using Dialogue — You used two objects and wrote some interesting dialogue between them, using the techniques we talked about in class (new paragraphs, quotation marks, commas, etc).  (Sept. 30 )
14. Reflection – Look back at your prompts and choose the one you liked best and explain why.

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST WRITING NOTEBOOK CHECK

15. Calvin and Hobbes — We used comic strips to correctly write out some dialogue. (Oct. 3 )
16. Adventure Story Rough Draft — You started to write out your short story project in rough draft version here. (Oct. 3 )
17. Raft Trip Plan — In preparation for a descriptive paragraph about our Raft Trip, you did some concept mapping to plan out some main ideas. (Oct. 9 )
18. Add An Adjective — I gave you a boring sentence (The dog went into the store and bought a bone) and you rewrote it two more times, using adjectives for descriptive writing. (Oct. 21 )
19. Harris Burdick — I pulled out some more strange illustrations from the Harris Burdick collection and you wrote a short story. (Oct. 21 )
20. Alien Discovery — You were an alien explorer who crash-landed on Earth and found an unknown object that you investigated with your five senses. (Oct. 22 )
21. Draw This Monster — I read you aloud two short stories and you drew the monster that was described. (Oct. 23 )
22. Mad Scientist Lab — You diagrammed out the laboratory of a mad scientist. (Oct. 24 )
23. Pumpkin Power — You used characters Jack o Lantern and/or Jill o Lantern as superheroes/villains in a comic strip, short story or play skit. (Oct. 27 )
24. Monster Exchange — You worked on the rough draft of your Monster Exchange project — the writing element and the sketch drawing. (Oct. 27 )
25. Day in Life of Monster — You wrote a first person narrative story of a typical day in the life of your monster. (Oct. 29/30 )
26. Forgotten Maps of Monsters — You created an entire map of a world, with a key, and then showed locations of monsters from Monster Exchange. Finally, you wrote a journal of an explorer traveling in your world. (Nov. 3 )
27. Letter to the President — In a Friendly Letter format, you wrote a letter to President-elect Obama. (Nov. 5 )
28. Monster Exchange Reflection – After you discovered your monster, you wrote about what made it easy and difficult for you to find. (Nov. 7 )
    ——————————————- this is end of second NB check —
29. Short Story — You wrote a short story. (Dec. 1)
30. Imaginary Land Travel Brochure — This is where you did the rough draft work for your travel brochure project. (Dec. 2 )
31. Inside the Imaginary Land — This was a short story that was set inside your imaginary world. (Dec. 3 )
32. Freewrite – You wrote what you wanted. (Dec. 4 )
33. Spiral Story — You wrote a story about something circular in the form of a circle — words spiral around.  (Dec. 5 )
34. Rubber Chicken Incident — You wrote a puppet script, with a rubber chicken in it. (Dec, 8 )
35. Invent a Holiday — You brainstormed a possible winter holiday concept. (Dec. 10 )
36. Short Story Titles – You came up with a list of possible short story titles and then donated one to the class. (Jan. 20 )
37. Short Story — You wrote a short story, with dialogue. (Jan. 21 )
38. Olde English — I gave you a paragraph written in Olde English and you translated it into Modern English. (Jan. 22 )
39. Jigsaw Words — You created five new words, using prefix-root-suffix. (Jan 23 )
40. Short Story — You wrote a short story, with dialogue. ( Jan. 27 )
41. Eponym — You created a product, named it after yourself and then wrote a brief description. (Jan. 29 )
42. Freewrite – You wrote what you wanted, in any style you wanted. Quietly. (Feb. 2 )
    —————————notebook check————-
43. Quidditch Design and Slogan — You designed a possible symbol for the 10th year of Quidditch at our school. (Feb. 11 )
44. Preposition Plaza — On our work with prepositions, you gave directions for people who were on the map on the worksheet. (Feb. 11 )
45. Silly Soup — You came up with a list of strange ingredients for a batch of Silly Soup for your class. (Feb. 13 )
46. Pronoun Poem — You wrote a poem with pronouns in it. (Feb. 13 )
47. Parts of Speech Rough Draft — This is where you did your work on sentences for identifying Parts of Speech. (Feb. 24 )
48. Part of Speech Bingo — You kept track of words in our Bingo game. (Feb. 25 )
49. Part of Speech Bingo — You kept track of words in our Bingo game. (Feb. 27 )
50. Harris Burdick — Either in your notebook or on the computer, you worked on a short story inspired by the Harris Burdick drawings. (March 4 )
51. Persuade Me — You wrote persuasive paragaphs on the merits of Quidditch (and later, on MCAS). (March 6 )
52. Directions to the Party! — You gave directions in an expository paragraph on how to find the party in the Norris School. (March 9 )
53. Stuffed Animal Day — You wrote a descriptive paragraph about one of the stuffed animals in the room and then worked on a short story in which one of the animals came to life - using first person narrative. (March 10 )
54. How to … Rough Draft — You worked on an expository paragraph explaining the steps on how to do something. (March 10 )
55. Memory Object — Narrative paragraph about an object. (3/ 12 )
56. Short Story — You wrote a short story (3/23 )
57. Safari Story — We looked at a picture of a tall tale story and explained the exaggeration going on. (3/ 23 )
58. Tall Tale — You wrote your own tall tale story. (3/ 24 )
59. Design a Quidditch Play – You designed out a play for Quidditch. (4/ 1 )
60. Imagery - You listened to poems about colors and wrote out the images from the poems. (4/ 8 )
61. Figurative Language Pre-Quiz – You wrote down answers to a sample quiz. (4/ 13 )
62. Short Story – You wrote a short story. (4/ 13 )
63. Wacky Animal - You created an imaginary animal. (4/15)
64. Picture Book Memory – You wrote about a book from your childhood. (4/28 )
65. Freewrite — You wrote what you wanted. (4/ 29 )
66. Project Update — You answered some questions about your book project (5/ 11 )
    (poetry journal)
67. Poem of Place — You wrote a poem celebrating some place. (5/ 27 )
68. Shape Poems — You created two shape/concrete poems. (5/28 )
69. Poetry Possibilities — Using the sheet, you wrote five different poems about one theme. (5/ 29 )
70. Haiku – You wrote two haiku poems — one traditonal and one non-traditional. (6/2 )
71. Poem for Two Voices — You wrote a poem for two people to read together. (6/ 3 )
72. Animal in Me — You compared yourself to some animal. (6/5)
73. Limericks – You wrote two limericks. (6/8 )
74. Epitaph –  Tombstone poetry. (6/ 9 )
75. The Raven — You drew an image from the Edgar Allen Poe poem. (6/9 )
76. Poetry Marathon — You used all different styles of poems based on themes I provided. (6/ 10 )
77. Inside This — You wrote a poem about an inanimate object. (6/ 10 )
78. Freewrite Poem — You wrote a poem, any style. (6/ 11 )

This is from Mrs. Poulin’s class. (Did you have Mrs. Poulin when you were in kindergarten?)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Students wrote some wonderful poems this week, using Figurative Language to get “inside” the spirit or essence of an inanimate object. Take a listen to the podcasts:

Writing Class 1

Writing Class 2

Writing Class 3

Writing Class 4

We will be experimenting with a site called ToonDoo, which allows you to make comic strips and do many other neat things. To get there, either follow this link or click on the picture here and then follow Mr. H’s directions on how to login to the site. Get creative!

Here is a comic strip poem from Mr. H:

Here are some websites that may be useful for your investigation into poetry. REMEMBER: YOU NEED TO FIND TWO POEMS, FILL OUT THE REFLECTION SHEET AND ALSO HAVE PAPER COPIES OF YOUR TWO POEMS — DUE ON MONDAY JUNE .

• Funny poems by Ken Nesbitt
• Giggle Poetry site
• Some classic poems
• Pitara Network Poems for Kids
• Shel Silverstein Poems
• Famous Poets and Poems
• Sports poems
• Haikus for People
• Funny sports poems
• The Poems of Langston Hughes
• The Poems of Emily Dickinson
• The Poems of Walt Whitman
• The Poems of Maya Angelou

Here a shape poem that I created:

(Click on the image to see the larger one)

And, when you are done, here are a few poetry activities:

• Magnetic Poetry Site
• Splatt Poetry
• Love that Poem — poetry creator (click on topics on the left of this site and then add your words)
• The Limerick Factory
• Create a Shape Poem
• Poetry Idea Engine

And finally:

A Poem Is A Little PathA poem is a little path
That leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores,
To anywhere you please.

Follow it and trust your way
With mind and heart as one,
And when the journey’s over,
You’ll find you’ve just begun.

From The 20th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury,
Knopf, 1999, copyright by Charles Ghigna.

Another digital book: