Fifth Graders Write, Perform Two-Voice Poems
In humanities class, students are finishing up the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. As one of their projects for this novel, students had to write a two-voice poem. A two-voice poem is a poem that is written from two different points of view on the same topic. Students wrote a poem of 20 or more lines that showed how Esperanza and another character responded to challenges. Some lines were spoken independently as individual characters and other lines were spoken together by both characters. Students worked with a partner to create a poem that used details from the text, figurative language, and descriptive language. In the end, students performed these poems with their partner in front of the class. The poems students wrote were filled with emotion and exemplified their knowledge that there are always different perspectives for every situation.
– Lindsay Fitzgerald, grade 5 teaching assistant
Second Graders Raise Nearly $3,000 for Gaining Ground
This spring, both second grade cohorts volunteered at Gaining Ground in Concord. Gaining Ground is a local nonprofit that grows and distributes 100 percent of its fresh produce to local hunger relief agencies. Last year alone, Gaining Ground grew and donated over 127,000 pounds of organic produce! The students pulled weeds, washed storage bins, and mulched beds as they helped the farmers in their work to fight food insecurity. The work at the farm was a culmination of a year-long service-learning project that linked work in our own BDS garden with fundraising, education, and community action. In April, the second graders collected pledges from relatives, friends, and neighbors for the number of pages read during a two-week period. The second graders are proud to announce now that they raised $2,937.80 to donate to Gaining Ground! We would like to thank everybody who supported the second graders by reading alongside them, making a pledge, or joining us on the farm.
– Nancy Fell and Sunny Lee, grade 2 teachers
Arts Update: Lessons in Coding for Fifth Graders
The fifth graders are learning how to code using the Circuit Playground Express. They used the infrared sensor to send and receive messages from each other. They later added conditional statements to make certain actions happen, such as turning on/off lights, and playing sounds based on the type of message sent.
– Kurt Robinson, innovation and art teacher
