4th Annual Poetry Slam!

Tuesday night I had the great pleasure of attending Chariho's 4th Annual Elementary Poetry Slam!  This year 79 students from the district participated, and 16 of them were from Ashaway!  I loved listening to the wide variety of poems that the students had prepared.  Some were long and some were short, some were funny and some were unbelievably touching.  It was a wonderful evening of children showcasing their work and taking pride in a job well done. 

When a Day Goes Wrong 

By David, Grade 2

When things go wrong

The day seems long

But I hold my head up

Like a lion I’m strong

I stand with no fear

And with that I must say

There’s always tomorrow

And tomorrow’s a new day

The Crow

By Alyvia, Grade 3

The crow sat on my windowsill,

One night when everything was still,

He just sat there, frozen, still

The crow that was on my windowsill.

 

 Doggy

By Fiona and Julia, Grade 4

Jumping, pouncing, running around

It is so much fun

I am a puppy that came from a pound

I am a number one

I bark every time you come through the door

And you say stop, stop, stop

Even though you say this I know every day you love me more

Every night on my bed I plop

And then I start to sleep

And then I start to have good dreams

And all night through I don’t say a peep

And every morning I wake up to say

“Bark bark” it’s a brand new day!

  

Hip hip hooray

It’s doggy day!

Caribbean

by Paige, Grade 3

Welcome to the Caribbean,

Where the ocean is as blue as the sky.

Where apple kale ice cream is served,

instead of rocky road.

Where beautiful fish rome the crystal clear waters.

Where dolphins glide through the water at sunrise.

Where tarpon dart toward underwater lights at dark.

Where sun sets are are pink, purple, yellow  orange, and gold, like the end of the rainbow.

Where everything is amazingly beautiful,

Welcome to the Caribbean!

Enjoy your time while you have it,

Cause it will fly by fast………….

Welcome back home, back to reality.

  

Summer Activities

By Julianne and Hayleigh, Grade 4

Surfing, body surfing

And paddle boarding

At the beach

Licking, slurping

And dripping

At the ice cream parlor

Skateboarding, rollerblading

And biking

In the park

Softball, soccer

And basketball

At the sports field

Summer is so much fun

When you spend it

Doing activities you love!

 

It was a truly special event and my thanks go out to all who helped to make it happen!!

Rooster Games 2017

On Friday our fourth graders participated in the 9th Annual Ashaway School Rooster Games!  All of the students who read at least five of the books on the list of nominees for the Rhode Island Children's Book Award were invited to participate.  The six teams (each a mix of boys and girls from both fourth grade classrooms) competed in a variety of games that were based on books from the list.

Rooster Games Champion Readers!

I had five students who earned special recognition by reading all 15 of the RICBA nominees that I bought for Ashaway School.  I started off the games by awarding Champion Reader medals to these students!

Two of the games are set up on Google Slides.  They are projected onto the large screen above the stage, and the students collaborate with their teammates to come up with the answers.  Then they use marker boards to display them and earn points.
 


  
Students match pictures from each book to their titles in the Illustration Round, and they answer multiple choice and short answer questions in the Question Round. 

 

For the "table top" rounds, the teams are matching the book titles to characters, settings, objects and the first lines of the books they come from.

Character Round

First Lines Round

Object Round

Settings Round

  

One of the RICBA titles, A Whole New Ballgame, inspired this year's reading relays: A Whole New BALLOON Game!  The first two games involved passing a balloon down the line of team members.  For "Hoops" one student passed the balloon up and down through hoops created by the team's arms, and for "Crabs" all the students passed the balloon down their line using only their elbows!

The last balloon game was the "Frenzy".   All of the students stood in the middle of the gym and the chaperones lined up on one side.  Then the grown-ups started tossing balloons to the kids who had to get the balloons to the opposite side by batting them with their hands.  

Any balloons that hit the floor were "out".  All the ones that made it all the way across were collected, then popped!  Inside every balloon was a slip of paper with a team's name written on it, and each team called earned a bonus point.  (There were 36 balloons so each team had 6 balloons with their names inside.)   There was almost as much excitement when I read the names out loud as there was when they were playing the game!

This year I also added an additional game: Charades!  This was a round that the teams could work on as they finished the table top games.  I had been worried that they'd be watching the other teams to get hints on the answers, but it turned out that they were all laser-focused on their own "actors".  

This year our Rooster Games winners were Team Red, Team Green, and Team Blue!  Yup, a three-way tie!  There's no prize for winning the Rooster Games, but at the end of the day all of the students who qualified to participate in the games gets to enjoy a pizza party sponsored by our P.T.O., so they truly are all winners!

      It was a really fun event, and it couldn't have happened without the support of our fourth grade teachers, our parent volunteers, and our Ashaway School P.T.O.  My sincerest thanks go out to them all!