Charles' Cinquain Poem Completed on the 6th of March
In school (located in NYC), Charles’ classmates learned about cinquain poems this week and created their own. Even though our ‘classroom’ is being held in Paris for the next 10 days, we learned about these five lined poems as well. There are technically are 3 versions of cinquain poems, but we only focused on two of them:
#1
Line 1: One Word
Line 2: Two Words
Line 3: Three Words
Line 4: Four Words
Line 5: One Word
#2
Line 1: A Noun
Line 2: Two Adjectives
Line 3: Three ‘-ing’ Words
Line 4: A Phrase
Line 5: Another Word for the Noun
As Charles’ travel teacher, I try to incorporate location-inspired material and themes with Charles’ classroom curriculum. This lesson was easily adapted to our travel experience, since the content of the poem was up to the writer. We simply inserted the travel theme. During lunch, we brain-stormed some ideas and came up with our first poem together. Of course, food was the topic and Laduree macaroons were our inspiration.
Macaroons
J’adore you
chocolate, pistachio, caramel
Come to my mouth
Laduree
2 days later, 3 poems, a rough draft and an illustrated final draft, Charles came up with his own cinquain poem about travel. If you are having trouble reading the photo above, this is Charles’ poem completed on March 6, 2011:
Travel
fun, adventure
exciting, flying, learning
in the forest, city or log cabin
Planet Earth
Simply put, I love what I do.
For your viewing pleasure....the infamous Laduree Macaroons
As the snow and freezing rain pummel the East Coast, I am wearing a t-shirt and jeans sitting in a conference room at a Hilton in Hartford, CT ‘talking shop’ with other educators. Some of us (like myself) were drawn to the Lindamood-Bell Reading Program for one particular child, while others of us came here for whole classes full of kids who need to strengthen their sensory-cognitive processing for language and literacy skills (strengthening reading, spelling and comprehension skills).
Math challenges are easy to come by when you are traveling. As adults, we are well aware of the magical powers of subtraction in our ever-shrinking bank accounts during family travel.
Today was Charles’ first day of summer school here in Paris. He was excited about all of the new materials I bought and was full of questions about what we were going to learn on this trip. Adorable. I have such lofty ideas for this summer! And I am thrilled he is as excited as I am. Most importantly, he will be reading at 2nd grade level by the end of July! Bon été!
Charles is obsessed with maps! Nothing is cooler than a map. He draws them for EVERYTHING and if we go somewhere that provides a location map, he must be “in charge” of it, which seldom leaves his stubborn hands. Whether a map is of a zoo, a city, a country, or of the stars and planets, the same basic knowledge is required to understand the information it contains: scale, orientation, angles, and measurement. As a teacher, I like maps because they combine reading and math skills and helps build spatial sense and visual literacy.
