In Katie Wood Ray's excellent book Wondrous Words, she talks about how to create choral poems from picture books. The idea is this:

1) Read a picture book with rich language out loud to the class.

2) Provide copies of the text so that each student can follow along.

3) Read it again, and this time have each student highlight words and sentences that are the most striking, the most surprising, that have the most poetry, and that just sound magical.

4) Then the students do the difficult task of choosing the most striking words, no more than 15.

5) I then ask them to quietly practice the words they chose, and ask if anyone has a good beginning. 

6) In a circle, one by one, the class recites their words. The resulting poem is always really cool. I record the voices, and transcribe them into poems. The following are 4 great picture books that lend themselves to choral readings, and the class choral poems that we created this year.

My Momma Had A Dancing Heart

Grade 4-R Choral Poem

And afterwards we’d cut snowflakes paper-white delicate, and sip cocoa with marshmallows floating

Carrying me along until the music slows and I feather-float down... down to the ground

Air-daring leap-flying wing-soaring letting the spring rain, summer waves, autumn leaves, winter snow carry me along

The sand stuck between the toes of our up-and-down squish-squashing feet

We’d dance a frog-hopping leaf-growing flower-opening “Hello Spring” ballet

Out we’d go and do a body-flat arms-moving-up-and-down snow-angel “Hello Winter” ballet

We’d dance a frog-hopping leaf-growing flower-opening “Hello Spring” ballet

Eye-blinking blue air with Momma leading in the leaf-kicking, leg-lifting, hand-clapping, “Hello Autumn” ballet

Spring rain, summer waves, autumn leaves, winter snow... carrying me along until the music slows

We’d cut snowflakes paper-white delicate, and sip cocoa with marshmallows floating

Go and do a body-flat arms-moving-up-and-down snow-angel “Hello Winter” ballet

My mama had a dancing heart, and she shared that heart with me

And afterwards we’d cut snowflakes paper-white delicate, and sip cocoa with marshmallows floating

One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies

4^th Grade’s Fourth Choral Poem

Just beneath the surface is a tangle of weed and driftwood where tiny creatures cling.

And in winter to turquoise lagoons, warm as a bath, where she can munch among corals.

Far, far out to sea, land is only a memory.

Above them on the beach a hundred eyes watch, on the lookout for a meal.

She remembers the taste of the water here and the sound of the surf.

She pokes her pinprick nostrils through the silver surface... blink and you’d miss it.

And in winter to turquoise lagoons, warm as a bath, where she can munch among corals.

Not much bigger than a bottle top, she hides in the green shadows. She’s a baby.

Left behind, under the sand, her eggs stay deep and safe. Baby turtles grow inside.

Land becomes a memory waiting to wake in the head of the little turtle.

The turtle swims around, flapping her long front flippers like wings. She is flying underwater.

Then she’s gone, diving down into her secret life again.

And empty sky touches the water.

I Love You The Purplest

Grade 4-R’s Second Choral Poem 

The mist of a mountain

The splash of a waterfall

The hush of a whisper

I love you the color of a dragonfly at the tip of its wing 

Max exploded from the cabin, twirling the shovel in front of him 

The mist of a mountain

The splash of a waterfall

The hush of a whisper

Julian shut the cabin door tightly to keep it safe from burglars and bears 

The mist of a mountain

The splash of a waterfall

The hush of a whisper

I love you the color of a leopard’s eye when it prowls through the jungle 

I love you the color of a leopard’s eye when it prowls through the jungle 

In the end, Mama caught one fish, Julian caught one fish and Max caught three 

I love you the reddest. I love you the color of the sky 

Stars sprinkled the sky and water turned dark as night 

I love you the color of a leopard’s eye when it prowls through the jungle 

I love you the bluest. 

I love you the color of a dragon fly at the tip of its wing 

I love you the color of the sky before it blazes into night 

Bat Loves The Night 

4^th Grade Choral Poem

Gliding and fluttering back and forth, she shouts her torch of sound among the trees.

Now, she unhooks her toes and drops into black space.

Over bushes, under trees, between fence posts, through the tangled hedge, she swoops untouched.

Gliding and fluttering back and forth, she shouts her torch of sound among the trees.

This times she bites hard. Its wings fall away like the wrapper from a candy.

But the moth’s pearly scales are moon dust slippery. It slithers from between her teeth.

Bat is at home in the darkness, as a fish is in water.

She unfurls her wings made of skin so fine, the finger bones show through.

Bat shouts as she flies. Louder than a hammer blow. Higher than a squeak.

This times she bites hard. Its wings fall away like the wrapper from a candy.

The velvet scrap battling climbs aboard and clings to Bat’s fur by its coat hanger feet.

She shouts her torch of sound among the trees listening for her supper. All is still.

Our 4th Grade poetry curriculum has an emphasis on performing poetry. And one of the most interesting, demanding, and cool ways to showcase this is by using poems that require multiple voices. We look at Joyful Noise poems and MathTalk, but the most challenging is Big Talk, by Paul Fleischman.

Of the three poems featured in this book, the first one is probably the most accessible by 4th graders. The following is a showcase of this first poem, "Quiet Evenings".

My fourth grade counterpart, Paulita, noticed the paradox of how much food we waste at Lincoln School given that we live in one of the poorest countries in the world. On the weekends I've noticed that some of the neighborhood children will dig through Lincoln's garbage cans placed in the parking lot scavenging for food and drinks. Although we are not yet in the position to be actively helping the poor of our neighborhood, we hope to get there. Right now, we are trying to change the culture of the school through awareness and mindfulness. We made it as one of our goals this year to recognize and try to address the problem.  We talked about it with our fourth grade classes and tried to actively reduce our individual and general food waste at the elementary school. 

Paulita put together the following objectives and roles for our students:

Essential Question

How can the students at Lincoln effectively reduce the amount of food waste during the lunch period?

Objective

Students will create an informational campaign that seeks to raise awareness about the food being wasted.  The campaign will target three key points that include the following.

·      The Positives Effect of Food Conservation

·      Global Problem of Food Shortage

·      Individual Responsibility

Roles

Wall Posters

Students who choose this role should have strong research and art skills.  Those making wall posters will highlight an important food issue that promotes the conservation of food, create informational posters about this issue, and then publish the posters in strategic points around the lunch area so that students are reminded of the importance of food conservation.  These should look as professional as possible!

Table Pamphlets

Students who choose this role must be creative and willing to do a bit of research.  You will create self-standing displays that will be placed on the lunch tables with the purpose of creating awareness about food conservation.  These displays should be visible, but not larger than 20 cm in length and width so that they don’t take up too much room on the lunch tables.

Classroom Speakers

These students must be effective communicators and public speakers.  Their main job is to create an informational presentation that explains the mission of responsible food consumption.  This presentation will be formally delivered to the various elementary classrooms.

Food Monitors 

These students will be enforcers of the mission.  In effect, you are the “Conscience Police” and are responsible for reminding the other students at lunch how to be responsible food consumers.  You may want to create a system of monitoring food waste so that everyone can have a visible reminder of how the elementary school is doing with its food waste.

Morning Assembly Skits 

These students will be the eye openers to the whole elementary including the teachers.  Students taking this role have to have excellent acting skills as well as a loud voice.  They have to be creative and willing to work as a team.

News Reporters

This group of students will be responsible for creating a news type video including photographs of our own food waste at Lincoln.  They have to have excellent computer skills as well as filming or photographing skills.

The children signed up for the role that they felt they could best enjoy and contribute to. The following is a short documentary that the News Reporters made:

There are a lot of high school and university lip dubs out there. This is an excellent community builder for elementary schools as well. It can incorporate several grades, it takes a considerable amount of planning that the students quickly take ownership in, and it's a lot of fun. 

This quarter I'm offering a "Make Your Own Music Video" after school activity, with the intention of making a lip dub. After watching several examples and voting on a song to sing, the grades 2 through 5 children began dividing up parts and choreographing it.

We've already learned some valuable lessons:

- It takes practice to walk backwards and not bump into things.

- It's impossible to walk up the stairs backwards.

- We can help out and do a lot of cool things that add to the video even when we're not singing. 

Here is the lip dub we made yesterday:

For the last couple of months of 4th grade, we tackle a huge theme: Social Inequality. The prezi below shows several of its components:

The last genre I want to feature in this year's advertising film festival is "celebrity." It's a tricky genre to both write and perform in, because the students have to figure out how to represent celebrities and act as celebrities without actually being the celebrities. This means that the writer has to write explicitly what she would rather assume. 

The genre of "celebrity" features famous people selling a product. It's a genre within itself, because it counts on the assumption that if a famous person likes the product, then you should like it too.

The toughest part of this first commercial is the beginning. The writer figured out that the best way to introduce students playing celebrities was to have a tongue-in-cheek introduction in the limousine:

The second feature of this genre uses the music of the celebrity to establish the celebrity:

The third genre of advertising we studied and wrote in is "Bandwagon." Although to be fair, it's really not possible to write a bandwagon commercial without crossing over into other genres. This first commercial could just as easily be "Adventure," and is probably the truest commercial that was made this year. It does a couple of things that have never been done before. The first is that there is no talking in the commercial. There is only a voice-over. The second is that instead of a group of friends celebrating a product, as in most bandwagon commercials written by elementary students, it shows off the genre by having a series of completely unrelated people all over the world, tied together by the child's product. 

The next one is another cross-genre commercial. It's a comedy, but it's central feature is that everyone loves the jokes sold by this student:

Finally, this next commercial features something that I've never had any student do before. For his commercial, he wrote and sang a jingle. It's one of the class favorites because it's funny and creative, but also because everyone was invovlved- hence the power of "bandwagon." 

On a technical note, near the end of the commercial it sounds like there is a toy piano that accompanies the student's voice. I used the cool web app ujam, which among other things, can change voice into instruments. So I ran the song through the application, and converted it into two different instruments which I overlap over the voice during the commercial. 

The second genre of advertising that the children studied we eventually labeled as "You'll Be Better." This is the type of advertising that promises a better life if only you buy their product. This genre produced one of the most sold commercials I've seen come out of 4th grade. I like this one because it's good without any special effects. It's quick and to the point:

The most common type of commercial that I've seen written by 4th and 5th graders is someone going to the store and buying something and... that's it. Here is a pretty typical example, although I like the sibling rivalry and crossing the street was fun. At the end of this commercial  there is a reflection of why the product is so good, but I'm considering being ahead of the game and banning the idea before we start writing next year:

Finally here's a straight forward example of the genre. 

This year I wanted to try to inspire kids to choose "just-right" books while they were doing independent reading. Battle of the Books is something that I wanted to do for a long time, but have never been around enough books to do it properly. I'm still not, but instead of having a book for each child, I put out 26 books with 5 or 6 copies each. Then I split the class into 6 groups. Each member of the group worked with each other to maximize the number of books they read, and at the end of 2 1/2 weeks we all came together in the library to do our battle.

The prize? An increased grant for their startup businesses in class economy.

I haven't posted in a while (besides the International Poetry Day post) in part because I've been really busy with our advertising unit. This year we have 26 students who each made a commercial in a particular genre for their class business. It was a big task. But when it was over, our class had a really cool film festival for the elementary titled "26 short films that want to sell you something." For the next few blog posts I'm going to feature a few of these short films based on their genres.

Before we started writing, we studied and discovered several advertising genres. Here are some of the genres that were found this year:

Adventure, Bandwagon, Celebrity, "You'll Be Better", Fear and Safety, and Comedy

The next challenge was for the children to write a commercial for their product in a particular genre. Then they wrote a commercial for the same product in another genre. And then another. 

After that they chose one to polish and include as many details as possible. 

Some commercials required a green screen, and some did not. For this blog post, I want to highlight the "Adventure" genre of advertising. We see this genre a lot when companies sell toys. But there's a surprising amount of ads that sell socks that use this genre too. Socks by themselves are quite boring. But socks worn by a mountain climber on the top of Mount Everest are awesome! 

Kids love writing in this genre. Here are three diverse student examples from this genre. The first imploys the green screen in a variety of ways.

I like the idea of this next one. Using one's own imagination to be the central figure of a commercial is done quite a bit in advertising, but I've never had a child attempt it before this year, and this year I had several try writing a commercial like this.

This last one uses the green screen too, but it's different because the child programmed the background (when she gets sucked into the TV) using Scratch.