Last Days

Still reading,
Still creating,
Still dramatizing,

"Library" is so much more than. . . (fill in the blank)!

I took almost 600 photos this year of students and activities in the library. I hope you have been able to see that we have shared words, stories, strategies, poetry, and joy.

As a teacher, sharing the lifelong joy of learning is my mission. Reading is one avenue to joy, and I hope that the students who have come through my classes have experienced this.

Peace to all!

P.S. All library books are due this Thursday, May 14th!

Poetry & Chrysalis

Students celebrated poetry by reading poems, writing poems, performing poems, and carrying poems in their pockets for National Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 30, 2009.

First grade students are raising at least three monarch butterflies that I shared with them from my own family's butterfly rescue project. We harvested the eggs from a field in Jackson. You can read more about it here. As of Thursday, they had one chrysalis, one large caterpillar, and one smaller caterpillar that still has some eating and growing to do. When I poked my head in the classroom on Thursday, students were reading Eric Carle's classic book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (which turned 40 years old this year) to their tiny friends. I love this.

At our last Reader's Theater Club meeting for 2009, students shared their "pocket poems," and divided into small groups to read, analyze, and perform sets of poems from This is Just To Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman. This is one of my favorite recent books of poetry for children, and Sidman is one of my favorite poets.

The students in the Reader's Theater Club have been a joy! This was our last meeting for the year. We have had lots of fun, laughed, experimented, dramatized, tongue-twisted, pantomimed, read, discussed, read with expression, read some more, and acted a little silly from time to time! What could be better?

Visual Art and Drama in the Library

Fourth graders worked on their individual quilt blocks that must incorporate three symbols of the Underground Railroad. Next week, they will finish these projects and write paragraphs about their blocks, how they designed them, and the symbols they chose.

Students in Reader's Theater club consulted each other and worked together to design a story from three random nouns. We played a game called "Story Court," in which participants had only a few minutes to develop a story with a beginning, middle and end. The story was told (and acted out) to the jurors and the judge (Mrs. Owen, of course). If the story did not have the necessary parts, the students were given a sentence of guilty and were made to do something crazy and silly for their peers. The students enjoyed the guilty verdicts as much as the not-guilty verdicts!

I am continually amazed (and entertained) by the creative, talented, and energetic students at St. Therese. They keep me on my toes as a teacher, make me smile, and cause me to wonder who and what they will become in this life. I believe great things are in their futures.

Poetry and Pantomime

We spent a lot of time talking about history this week. We discussed big concepts such as civil disobedience, equality, freedom, nonviolence, peace, and love. We marveled at the words and songs from the inauguration.

In Reader's Theater Club on Thursday, we combined techniques from reader's theater and pantomime to make the images from Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem come alive for us. Many who know me know that I love poetry, and I love using poetry with children.

"Praise Song for the Day" carries many concrete images about our history and about where we may be going. Some of the lines from the poem were easy to put to movement such as:

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

Other sections were more difficult such as:

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

We all put our creative minds to the task together. Full of energy and full of passion, the students moved poetically to match the words of Alexander's poem with their hands, facial expressions, and bodies.

First Reader's Theater Club Meeting

DSCN8461
Originally uploaded by nolteowen

On Thursday, September 25th, students in the St. Therese Reader's Theater Club gathered in the library for their first meeting of the year. We warmed up our brains by playing a game of "Zip" in which students pass a clap around a circle and practice teamwork and communication. Then, we warmed up our tongues with a few tongue twisters to help us practice enunciation. Not one person escaped without laughing!

The main attraction of the meeting, however, was to dive into a reader's theater script. We read a script by Judy Freeman based upon Lane Smith's John, Paul, George, and Ben. In the photo above, Brevin L. plays a young Thomas Jefferson who was known for his independence. All in attendance did an awesome job at our first attempt, and the group intends to read this script again at our next meeting and switch up parts.

In this photo, Jimmy B. volunteers to read a tongue twister.