It's all about food writing this session, and we're having some yummy fun! One lesson focused on personifying a type of food (give it human traits and characteristics). Josie (4th grade) created a character called Bartholemew Bacon:
Bartholemew Bacon had greasy red hair and a wiggly body and lisped on his s's. He drove a pink volkswagon bus that looks like a pig. He has a sister who is named Bertha Bacon, a dad named Bob Bacon, and a mom named Betsy Bacon. Oh yeah, and old Grandpa Bert Bacon. But nobody really cares about him. Bartholemew Bacon likes pigs but is dead because I accidentally ate him for breakfast.
We're working on using juicy adjectives, metaphors, similes and alliteration to make our writing more appetizing (or disgusting). Maddie (5th grade) described some particularly bad fried chicken like this:
The "fried chicken" was a disgrace to the world's chickens . . . My screaming starved stomach severely scolded my mouth for even allowing it to cross my tongue. The foul, slimey, rotten surface emotionally scarred my tastebuds and the wave of atrocious awfulness hit my tongue and the plasticy pandemonium paralyzed my palate and it was all I could do not to send it spewing across the restaurant and getting a tongue transplant.
We began this session in January with a "getting to know you" exercise -- I asked the students to write about what matters most to them. Here's some of what Ruby (4th grade) had to say:
It matters if your mom isn't telling you to eat your veggies . . . It matters if your best friend forgets your birthday . . . It matters if the oldest sister in the family isn't yelling at you every 2 seconds!
And 3rd-grader Jillian says:
Playing baseball with my dad and brother on a hot summer day matters . . . It matters when my best friend moves to Texas . . . It matters when my dog eats chocolate, gum or raisins . . .