Important Reminder

 

Our fieldtrip is this Tuesday, May 29.  Buses will leave school at 9:00.  Please make sure your child is at school on time, appropriately dressed and has a lunch in his or her backpack.  Students will be carrying their own lunches.  After the tour, we'll be meeting at Pioneer Square for lunch just after noon.  (Our tour ends at noon and then we'll find an open area on the steps to eat.)

Bring in your white t-shirt for Camp next week.  I have some extras in various sizes but the class decided the fairest thing to do was to ask everyone to bring one and if someone forgets or if the family isn't able to get one, we'd cover it.  We will be tying the shirts on Thursday.

Mr. Parker's Bring Your Family to Music day for our class is Friday, June 1, from 11:10 - 11:55 in the cafeteria.

Our fabulous Portland musical is on Tuesday, June 12, at 1:45.  Your children are so talented and adorable.

Poetry Homework

Each of the poetry prompts below asks you to choose a different kind of subject. The prompts are designed to get you thinking about what matters to you and why, and then to express your feelings through poetry. Choose one to write idea to use for writing an ode.

1. Someone you love. The most traditional odes are written to extol the virtues of a loved one. Who do you love? Tell them why with a poem.
2. Someone you admire. You don’t have to know or love someone to pay tribute to them. Write a poem honoring one of your heroes, someone who has, from a distance, made a difference in your life.
3. An inanimate object. You can write a silly poem about how much you admire your toaster or you can write a serious piece declaring the magnificence of an inanimate object with more meaning (something like a book, perhaps?).
4. An abstract concept. Can you pay tribute to love itself? Write a poem honoring something that can’t be seen or touched: honor, passion, curiosity, or loyalty. Or music.
5. Someone you despise or view as a villain. What happens when you look at your enemy and search for his or her merits? Can you see the good in someone you see as bad?
6. A total stranger. Has a total stranger ever helped you? Have you ever thought about all the people in this world you’ve never met but who affect your life?
7. A place. The beach, the mountains, the vast sea, and deep space are all great places for tributary poems. Write about the city you love, the town you call home, or your favorite vacation destination.
8. Be a fan. Write a poem to your favorite book, movie, song, or TV show.
9. Satire. Turn your tribute on its head and write a tongue-in-cheek piece. Tell bad drivers, rude customers, and evil dictators how grateful you are for what they’ve done. Do it with a wink and a smile.

Lewis and Clark Writing Homework

As students write their realistic fiction account of one day with the Corps of Discovery (using the timeline link on the right for guidance), keep the following information in mind:

To appreciate the work of these men, let us remember the conditions under which they wrote. Most days of the voyage involved hard physical labor, working canoes upstream, loading and unloading bulky equipment, hunting and butchering, tanning leather, making moccasins, cooking, chopping and shaping wood, caring for horses and searching for strays, mounting guard, portaging around falls and rapids, all while exposed to every kind of weather and to the attacks of insects and grizzly bears, with the constant danger of physical injury from accidents. At the end of such a day, perhaps while others were dancing to Pierre Cruzatte's fiddle, a journal keeper would have to write by the light of a campfire in notebooks somehow kept safe from the elements. According to Lewis, seven of the thirty-odd men had the perseverance and the sense of destiny to try.