Room 19 Fairview Middle School

What is your favorite book? 

Growing up, my favorite book was Escape From Warsaw by Ian Serraillier.  It was my first introduction to WWII and the Holocaust.  I read it again just a few years ago and loved it just as much.  Some of you may have read it with it’s original title, The Silver Sword.  I also loved anything written by Lurlene McDaniel and am thrilled when I see kids still reading her books today. 

My favorite books in college were text books!  Who had time for recreational reading then? 

Today, I love the authors Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Piccoult.  Sparks is just as good of a speaker as he is a writer.  I was thrilled to get to hear him speak at an Accelerated Reader conference that I attending in 2005.  I am yet to read a book by either of him or Piccoult that I don’t like.  If I had to pick a favorite written by each I would pick Dear John and Vanishing Acts.  (I just saw an advertisement for Dear John becoming a movie!)

I also enjoy reading books in a series.  I’ll admit it, I read the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series and loved them both.  The O’Mally Series by Dee Henderson was a great read. 

Read the comments to find out what books our students love.

Requirements

free verse – simile – metaphor – line breaks – enjambment – action verbs

         bonus – repetition, assonance, consonance, alliteration

Requirements

free verse – alliteration – assonance – consonance – repetition – carefully place words – imagery

        bonus – simile, metaphor

The genre focus for Unit 3 in our Literature Book was short stories which led to our final project of writing our own short story. There are some really good stories in here. I encourage you to read and comment on them.

After completing a Literature Unit reading folktales, the 8th graders wrote a modern version of an old folktale.  I love how they turned out!

Each year the Sidney Herald puts together a Creative Kids section. Fourth through sixth graders create advertisements for local businesses while seventh and eighth graders write an essay.

This year the topic for the essay was “What makes your grandparent ‘Grand’? The top essays from the county will be published in the December 16th issue. Here are our submissions.

Every Tuesday during the first quarter of school, 6th graders have an assignment we call “Paragraph a Week.” The topics change each week and students look forward to what will be next. Here is a list of some of our topics: Return to School, Grandparent’s Day, Become an Inventor, Signs of Fall and Haunted House.

During second quarter, we take a break from “Paragraph a Week” and instead do assignments from our Critical Reading Series.

This week, however, I surprised the students and they were able to choose from two topics for “Paragraph a Week.”

Option 1 – You have just been told that you may invite anyone in the world to your house as your guest for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Who will you pick? Why? For Language Arts this week, you are going to write a paragraph describing your Thanksgiving celebration. Tell me about your guest, why you chose him or her and then tell me about the day. What will you serve? What will you discuss? Will there be other guests? What do you plan to do to make it worth his/her time? Plan the celebration carefully and tailor it to your special person’s needs and personality.

Option 2 – We all know the basic story of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. Pilgrims left Europe because of religious persecution and were trying to make a new home in America. They arrived on the Mayflower, starved through much of the first winter, received help from friendly Indians, and a harvest meal including corn and turkey the next year. From whose point of view do we usually hear the Thanksgiving story? But what do we know about the Indians who had lived there for thousands of years?

The Indians in the classic Thanksgiving story are the Wampanoags. The Wampanoags were accustomed to giving thanks for nature’s bounty. They thanked the spirits of the game they killed for food, and thanked the Creator for good harvests. Corn was their most valued food, and they believed that it was a gift to them from the Creator. In 1620, a ship carrying European settlers landed off the coast of Massachusetts. The people, who would eventually be called Pilgrims, started a settlement at an abandoned Patuxet Wampanoag village. Some native people helped them through their first difficult year (nearly half of the Pilgrims starved to death) teaching them how to grow and gather native food. When the Pilgrims harvested their first crop, about a year after their arrival, they shared some food with Wampanoags who happened to be visiting. This was the first Thanksgiving.

The Indians gave thanks for many things every day. What things are you thankful for? Write everything down that comes to your heads in the graphic organizer below. For Language Arts this week you are to write a paragraph telling me what you are thankful for.

The Blues by Langston Hughes

When the shoe strings break
On both your shoes
And you’re in a hurry—
That’s the blues.

When you go to buy a candy bar
And you’ve lost the dime you had—
Slipped through a hole in your pocket
somewhere—
That’s the blues, too, and bad!

Something within the human spirit craves ritual. We order our lives into familiar and comforting patterns that become traditions: a turkey at Thanksgiving or a menorah in the window at Hanukkah. These rituals give us identity. They make us feel like we have a community. African-American food tradition is at the heart of African-American culture. Soul food connects African-Americans to their ancestry. African foods came to America with the slaves: melon, yams, okra, lima beans and sorghum came from home. Slaves incorporated the foods of Africa into European cooking favored on the plantation and fashioned meals out of cast-offs, including collard greens and ham hocks. Preserving culinary tradition and history is an important ingredient in establishing an ancestral connection, providing sustenance and creating a reason for celebration. (from Dream in Color sponsored by Target)

Here is Maya Angelou’s poem about Food

I Love the Look of Food
Popcorn leaps, popping from the floor
of a hot black skillet
and into my mouth.
Black words leap,
snapping from the white
page. Rushing into my eyes. Sliding
into my brain which gobbles them
the way my tongue and teeth
chomp the buttered popcorn.

When I have stopped reading,
ideas from the words stay stuck
in my mind, like the sweet
smell of butter perfuming my
fingers long after the popcorn
is finished.

I love the book and the look of words
the weight of ideas that popped into
my mind
I love the tracks
of new thinking in my mind.

Now, read the 6th graders poems about food. One was a love letter to their favorite food. The other was to be written about writing, using a cooking metaphor like Angelou did above. Enjoy!

Congratulations Sawyer, Bailey and Emily for placing in the Patriot’s Pen Essay Competition!