All posts in Em Beckert

Words are the Clouds

Last week at Symyser, the 4th graders and I read Words are Birds by Francisco X Alarcón. In addition to finding the connections Alarcòn makes between words and birds, we identified how the poem […]

Happy Places

Later in the week, Ms. Wilson’s 4th-graders at Dulles Elementary dove right into figurative language! We read Nikki Giovanni’s Knoxville Tennessee and talked about our happy places. I lead them through a short guided […]

Sound Poems

This week at Dulles I brought in some poems and curriculum from the Hands-on-Stanzas archive (Thank you to Beth and Leslie!) and taught a lesson on sound poems. We started by reading examples from […]

Life is Full of Suprises!

This week at Smyser, just before the break, The 4th-graders looked at a poem that has a surprising ending, which is emphasized by the final line break. I reviewed what we’ve been learning about […]

Writing About our Pets

When I visited Ms. Tze’s 4th-grade class at Dulles, we first spent some time getting to know each other with a name game, then I heard from them what they’d been learning so far […]

Hot Chip as Metaphor

Later in the week at Dulles, the 4th graders had some fun with metaphor! We read, “Words are Birds” by Francisco X. Alarcón, and discussed some of the ways in which the speaker feels […]

Until the Fence!

This week in Ms. Wilson’s 4th-grade class we started by asking ourselves about a time we were surprised. We then read the poem, “Skating in the Wind” by Kristine O’Connell George. The poem ends […]

Where do we find poetry?

For our first day with Ms. Wilson’s 4th-grade class at Dulles Elementary, we asked ourselves, what is poetry? And where is it? and when what and why? These 4th graders had lots of insightful […]

Fourth Grade’s Favorite Furry Friends!

For our second session at Smyser, we started the day with a warm-up game where we introduced ourselves with an alliterative adjective to go along with our names. I was “Energetic Em!” The students […]

Smyser’s 4th Graders Face Their Fears!

For our first session at Smyser, we closed out the spooky season with a poem that shows bravery in the face of fear: Maya Angelou’s Life Doesn’t Scare Me at All. We looked at […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET