Wonder
The long grass whispers
A blue so dark
A world of nonsense
A tangle of knots
Speak
Now grab some books off of your shelf, stack them up, and see what poem emerges for you! Please share yours with us.
What does it mean to be a writer? What kinds of writing do you like to write? How did you learn to write? How do you decide what to write about? These are some of the questions asked of 6th graders at the beginning of the school year. I was impressed by the responses and want to share some thoughts written by a student in my morning class.
Are you a writer? No one is born being a good writer, but you become one through practice.
Why do people write? People write because they love to and so they can tell people about themselves through another identity.
What does someone have to do or know in order to write well? To write, I think people should read more than they write and write about things around them.
What kind of feedback helps you most as a writer? Truthful feedback.
What does it mean to be a good writer? Are you a writer? Please comment.
We just finished making a book and writing about our heroes. Our heroes are people in our lives who have a big impact on our life. My hero is my brother. He is kind and extremely smart. We started making our hero books with figuring out our hero. Then we got all of our information about them and started thinking about which moment with our hero we were going to depict in our book. Finally, Mrs. Gignoux came to help us with making the actual hero book during one period of Language Arts, while in the other period we wrote about our hero over several days. Then when we were finished with our books and our writing, we pasted the story into the book. Yay! Our books were finally done and ready to be put in the Frank Gallery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina!
The whole sixth grade made hero books. We had to choose someone who we were influenced by and interview them. I chose my dad. Also, we had to choose three words that our hero represents. I chose hardworking, responsible, and helpful. We had to make books that were made out of paper, glue, stamped paper, cut paper, and some scissors were involved. After we finished everyone had to write a story and include the three words with examples. Also, we had to put the hero’s childhood in the story and I chose to put my dad’s hobbies. That was the process of making the hero books.
There were some parts of making the books I didn’t like and some parts I really liked. For example, when making the book it took a lot of glue and I hated getting my fingers sticky. Also, all of the paint would go everywhere. I liked interviewing to get information about my dad. One more thing was I really enjoyed the artwork even though I got dirty and I liked the way my book turned out.
“The Alchemyst” by Michael Scott is a six book series. The series has many main characters but focuses on one pair of twins; Josh and Sophie Newman. Josh and Sophie are supposedly the twins mentioned in a prophecy and referred to as Gold and Silver. They are called this, because every person in the world has an aura of a certain color. Some people with strong auras can use them to do amazing and terrible things. Gold and Silver auras are said to be some of the most powerful and rare. Josh and Sophie are said to be, “the two that are one, the one that is all. One to destroy the world, and one to save it.” The question you’re probably having now is: who is going to destroy the world? The answer is coming up in the next paragraph.
A race of ancient and powerful beings split in two groups. Dark Elders hated the human race and wanted to destroy them. The Elders (not to be confused with Dark Elders, even thought they are both Elders) help the humans grow. Both groups of Elders became known to the humans as gods, the sources of most legends. The Dark Elders make humans immortal, in return for eternal service.
This series is a cliffhanger, much like Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. No boring beginnings, awesome middles, and boring ends. The series will have you engrossed in the books from beginning to end. The only bad thing about the book is its repetitive language and overuse of the phrase “spoke in ____. A language that had not been heard in centuries”, and other phrases related to that one. Otherwise, this series is great. READ IT!!!!
Squirrel and His Foolish Friends
Once upon a time, there was a forest. In this forest, there lived a tribe of squirrels. All of the squirrels in this tribe were daredevils, except for one squirrel named Bob Scaredy Squirrel.
One day, Bob was talking with his friends, when they heard raucous laughter. Bob’s friends went investigating while he admired a caterpillar as it made its way up a tree. In the middle of its ascent, a lizard jumped from a nearby branch, grabbed the caterpillar, and started to run. As soon as it was out of sight, Bob heard a voice calling his name.
“Bob, come here Bob, you have to see this!!!!” Bob ran past the trees and saw, spread out on a cliff, a colossal log. Squirrels were running all over the log, their claws clacking against the wet wood. Suddenly, there was a large crack and the log dipped a few feet. All the squirrels gasped, then started laughing. It seemed that the crack only enticed them more to go on the log, not to run away.
“Come on Bob,” Bob’s friends urged. “This log is really cool!!! It even cracked a little bit!!” Of course Bob, being a smart squirrel said no. When Bob’s friends started urging him even more, he started arguing. When the squirrels started chanting his name, Bob gave in.
He started to slowly walk towards the log, trying to not be scared. When he set one foot on the log, Bob started thinking of all the horrible things that could happen to him if he went on the log.
“No!” Bob declared, “I won’t do it!” And with that, Bob walked off into the forest. He walked for a little while, when he heard a large crack, and squirrels screaming, loudly at first, then slowly getting quieter. Bob raced back to find that the log had broken, and all the squirrels had fallen to the rocky ground below.
Moral: Do what’s right. Don’t give in to negative peer pressure.
For my project on Comic Life, I chose The Smuggler. The Smuggler is about a smuggler who when trying to cross a border, is stopped by a border control officer. The border control officer then demanded to search the smuggler’s donkey. He does so, but finds nothing. This happens for ten years, and even thought the border control officer know that the juggler is smuggling something, he can’t prove it. In ten years, when the border control officer is retired, he sees the smuggler in the market, and asks him what he was smuggling. The smuggler says that he was smuggling donkeys. The moral of the story is to not overlook the obvious, and to not judge a book by it’s cover.
Here is the third chapter in Dragonland. I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 3
Finding Mark
Good! Ian, you’re awake. Sorry I blasted you with water. We have to go find Mark. “I’m injured forever,” he complained. “You are not…” I said, “you will heal quickly”. “How?” he asked. I explained that water might injure him, but he will heal just as fast.
As we set off, I heard some distant screaming. I figured it was Simon screaming that Mark was injured but I wasn’t sure. I ran to his house.
”OF COURSE I AM IT’S MARK THAT’S NOT OKAY!!!” he screamed back.
Simon explained to me how Mark was thrown off of a cliff.
”Is he okay?” I asked. Then I realized how stupid I sounded. Of course he was not okay. Well, at the time no but he would heal. Then I sensed something. Mark just landed in the water. “Okay guys Ian and I are going to jump off this cliff and Mark will bring us back up it. You ready Ian?
”Let’s go!” he replied. We jumped. The fall took forever. I finally sensed we were getting close. I looked down. Bad move! I landed face first onto the water. Mark was so startled he almost pelted me. Ian had landed ten times better than I did.
”Come on!” Mark said.
”I’ll stay here guys. I’ll heal before I come up.” I said.
”You sure?” asked Mark.
”I CAN TUNNEL!!!” I screamed. Ian and Mark started climbing.
• • •
An hour later I decided to climb up the tower. I made it up in five minutes. The whole group was worried. Even Robert and Eric were there.
”Where were you?” Ian asked.
”Just for once Ian! You know where I was!!!” I said angrily.
”Oh yeah!” he replied.
if there had only been another dinosaur around… Mark would be gone forever.
In class a few days ago, we made Valentine’s Day Poems. It is where we take an article from a newspaper or book, then cut it out and choose random words to make a poem. What is cool about this particular kind of “poem”, is you don’t know what it will be like until you are completely finished with the whole thing. Here is what mine looks like:
Picture shared at the Inuyasha Wiki
I can’t choose what book I want to continue making.
– Vampire King
– Monster Hunter
– Ninja Chakra and Tailed Beasts
– A world of animal demons like dog demons (from Inuyasha)
– or somebody tying to stop the balance of tao from destroying the planet