This Thursday is Poem in Your Pocket Day. The idea is to tuck a favorite poem into your back pocket to share with classmates, family members, and school staff. Poetry lovers across the country have come up with clever ways to celebrate.

Here in Room 17 we will use Poem In Your Pocket Day to entice students into the world of verse. Most of the fourth-graders have pockets that easily accessible so if someone asks to see an original poem or a copied favorite from one of our students in the hall on the way to recess or lunch, sharing a poem becomes a simple matter of reaching and reading.

Are fourth-graders the only people allowed to carry poems tomorrow? Not hardly. Here's the poem I'll be carrying around with me tomorrow:

The Rainy Day
Longfellow
 
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

That's rigtht, it's a cypress tree in the Van Gogh painting in the front of the room over the calendar. The bonus question was answered corretly this morning.This afternoon we'll begin the new Science unit, Life Structures, by making a classroom planter where we'll sprout seeds and learn about plant biology.We're also finishing up our latest art project, 'Landscapes in the Style of Van Gogh."

Fractions, central tendency(averages, medians, modes, ranges, etc.), double digit multiplication, long division, and decimals are parts of the broad Math curriculum in fourth grade this year.

Let's put some prepositional phrases in this week's story about someone who is good at a sport. In fact, try starting a sentence with a phrase, eg. "Under the glare of the cranky referee, Ruth waited anxiously for the inbounds pass from Rebecca who was standing as still as a statue." A simile or two in this piece of writing will add some good detail, too.

Friday

Name the word that refers to 'floating debris:' Flotsam
After a hint, the bonus question was correctly answered and were off to another round of current events, art projects, and a new Science unit: Life Forms. Spring is a good time for learning about seeds and that's where we'll start next week with a class planter and an assortment of seeds to sprout over the next several weeks.
Long division, fractions, decimals, probability, mean, mode, range, and median(central tendency) are parts of the broad Math curriculum we're working on now in the fourth grade. However, that does not mean it's time to slack off on practicing math facts. Let's keep sharpening those skills that will apply to so much in the future.