Songwriters Extraordinaire

We've spent the past week or two working as songwriters during Writing Workshop. Each day we sing songs, share what we notice about different structures and rhyme patterns, and work individually and in small groups to write our own original songs. Unlike the handful of class songs we write as a class each year, these are being written by small groups - or as we like to refer to them, bands.


You'd expect this might be really hard or even intimidating for eight, nine, and ten year olds but everyone really jumped right in. We studied songwriting last year which I'm sure helped. But I think, too, the mere fact that the kids spend so much time writing within so many different genres each and every day has played a big part. They write informational non-fiction, reflections, fantasy, comics, written conversations, realistic fiction, poetry, jokes, and on and on. They are powerful writers for their age and that fact is certainly not lost in the songs they are creating.


Over the past few days the kids have worked to pick one song from their drafts to publish, rehearse,and record. Jillian's dad, Clark, will be coming in next Thursday to record their songs for our new CD (Release Date: Spring). We'll also be recording our two most recent class songs - "The Plant Song" and "Reading is Thinking (It's Good for You)" - as well as a song with our special guest, recording artist Hannah Miller (don't forget she has a new CD she'll be bringing along in case anyone would like a copy. It's $5 and she'd be more than happy to sign it.). Look for videos of her visit to appear on our class blog over Winter Break. Sadly, this will most likely be our last chance to work with her. She is planning to move to Nashville in just a few weeks.


********


Today I recorded most of the groups as they rehearsed their songs and I thought you might enjoy hearing them as well. Although they were free to write songs about anything, most chose to write Christmas songs. There's one or two others who weren't ready for a recorded rehearsal just yet so I'll be adding those on Monday or Tuesday.

Enjoy

Homework Projects

Today the kids brought in the self-selected homework assignments they had been working on this week. Mrs. Vice and I were blown away. There was such a great variety of work. We saw: a biography of Rose's mother and Madison's grandpa, a nonfiction book about Mount Everest, a hand-made flip chart of the human body, various fact sheets on different animals, an assortment of experiments ranging from watering a plant to evaporation, a beautiful scrapbook with wonderfully written captions, multiplication and division problems, a detailed score sheet from a game of Scrabble with everyone's words and total scores, a rundown of a game of Yahtzee, and a slideshow from a visit to an International Fair.

This whole idea of letting the kids choose what they wanted to work on at home was exciting to me but a little scary too. Yet, look what they were able to do. Walking around looking at all their work as they shared it with their friends was easily one of the highlights of the year for me!

Illustrator Visit from James Ransome

We were lucky enough to receive a visit from illustrator James Ransome last Monday. He was in town for the Young Writers Conference in Irmo last Saturday and stuck around so that he could visit us all here at CFI and talk about his books. The kids were amazed by his many beautiful illustrations. In the video below he is explaining a bit of the process of taking a story and creating the illustrations for it.

A Great Gift

Roman came in on Thursday telling me he had written a song for his dad to sing for him on his birthday. He asked if I could put some chords to it and teach him how to play them. I had forgotten until about noon today when I looked over and saw his guitar propped up against the wall. Panicked,we grabbed our guitars and spent about ten or fifteen minutes finding something that matched the beautiful lyrics and melody he had created. Since he is just learning to play guitar it would be a lot to ask him to learn new chords and a new rhythm in just one day. So I am going to post a video of him singing his special song for his dad while I accompany on guitar. I hope you all enjoy it. I know his dad sure will!

Read Aloud

One of the greatest parts of our day happens just before dismissal. Once the kids get their things put together to go home they all head over to the floor for read aloud. This is an important structure for our learning because it allows the kids to access books that they may not be ready to read on their own just yet. Reading these books to them allows them to hear more complex sentence structures and vocabulary. Of course, it's also a great bonding experience. In this video, Mrs. Vice is reading our newest book, There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom.

Guitar Notes from March 2nd and 3rd

Be sure to work on that new G-chord and the new strum pattern. The strum pattern is counted 1 -and- 2- and- 3 -and- 4 -and-a- 1 -and- 2... It is all downstrokes except for the "a" after four. That one is an upstroke.

Guitar Notes from Feb. 9th and 10th

Thanks to Colby for his fine camera work!

Culture Study

Mrs. Vice is working with the kids to launch an inquiry into different cultures of the world. She started by sharing a book titled Celebrate: Connections Among Cultures that showed how different cultures use music, food, decoration, dance, and even fire to celebrate in their own way. The kids broke off into groups to read more. As they read, they used a highlighter or highlighter tape to mark the key words, phrases, and ideas from their texts. Below is are some videos of the kids at work. Note how their talk helps them to better understand what they're reading.

Guitar Lessons - Feb. 5

Here is a quick reminder of what we covered during today's guitar lesson.

Explorations and a New Song

Here's a quick look at what the classroom looks like during Explorations. We begin most every school day with about 25 minutes of Explorations. This is a time when the kids can come in and choose to work at the science table or in their writing notebooks or challenge someone to a game of chess. You will see each of these choices being acted out on the video in addition to reader's theater, number of the day, the class history log, and Othello.


We also learned a new song today. It is called Together We Can Change the World. Mrs. Barnes shared it with us all via e-mail so we read through the lyrics, watched the video on youtube, and then sang the song together.

Stone Fox Book Chats

Next week the kids will be engaged in book clubs. This will consist of choosing a book they like, reading daily, and meeting periodically with others in the class who are reading the same book to discuss what they are noticing and thinking. I expect, due to our focus next week on problem/solution and cause/effect in literature, that many of their discussions will include at least a bit of talk about this.

In preparation for these chats, we are reading Stone Fox together this week. Each day we read a few chapters together and practice how to discuss literature with others (we've actually done a good bit of this all year with each of the books we've read). A significant part of this is learning to stick with a topic of discussion rather than just jumping from random thought to random thought.

Be sure to check out the videos below of the kids' book chats. They are doing a GREAT job. I bet you'll see that their book chats aren't too unlike the adult book chats that go on all around the country. In fact, they probably do a BETTER job of staying on topic. Enjoy! (I did video each of our groups but unfortunately I can only post two of them. The other two videos were not loading very quickly at all.)

Winter Musical Program

Here are videos of two of the songs our class performed at the Musical Gathering just before Winter Break. I tried my best to get everyone but from my vantage point, just behind Mrs. Edwards' legs, it was a bit tricky. Enjoy!