Welcome Back!
It's Poetry Month. We are reading and writing poems. Ask your children about the poetry ambush! Younger students have to memorize four lines of a poem and be ready to read the rest. They find me and recite the lines they have memorized and in exchange, they get a fruit popsicle at lunch. Middle School students have also gotten to hear favorites of mine by Seamus Heany, T.S. Eliot, and Nikki Giovanni. For students in grades 5-8, the challenge is to memorize and recite at least 16 lines of a favorite poem. We will end the month with our 3rd and 5th-grade poetry slam performance. If you are looking for some poems to read with your children Poetry.org has a great list of poems of types for children.
On Tuesday Middle School students heard a presentation by Dr. Peter Wilf, he started his career teaching Middle School science at Westfield. Following a summer exploring the plants in the New Jersey Pinelands, Dr. Wilf went to graduate school to pursue his loves of Geology and Botany. These combined passions have taken him all over the world. Westfield kids saw his students finding fossils in Wyoming, Montana, Chili, and Brunei. Ask your kids how paleobotanists find pollan. Peter shared his love of fossils, what they can teach us about life and evolution. Most importantly, he clearly loved his work and provided an example of what it looks like to follow one's interests. Who knows maybe we have a budding paleontologist in our midst.
What I am Reading:
Seamus Heaney
District and Circle
Nikki Giovanni
I am Loved
Mary Oliver
Why I Wake Early