ReNEW Schaumburg Charter School Middle School, Visual Art & ELA / Math Ms. Couch / Mrs. Richardson
In Mrs. Richardson’s middle school self contained classroom we spent the first day of fall reflecting on the previous season, summer. Together we brainstormed: what words describe summer? Ms. Couch recorded a long list of words as we talked about the things that make summer so wonderful. Once we had twenty words or so we took each word in turn, breaking it into syllables. We practiced clapping once for each syllable, speaking the words rhythmically. We then learned about a poem form called the cinquain. This poem has five lines, each with a particular number of syllables. Together we worked with our summer words,counting syllables to fill each of the five lines. (The syllable pattern is 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.)
We then combined our poem with summer illustrations to create a tribute to summer to hang in our classroom.
Later, in our Math Meeting, we looked at the words left on our brainstorm list. We ranked these summer words to create a top twelve list. Placing the best word on the one space, we filled in the rest of the spaces to make a clock poem. 1) swim 2) fun 3 )peaches 4) shopping 5) picnics 6) vacation 7) bubble gum 8) ice cream 9) lemonade 10) bike 11)beach 12) barbeque
This VSA program is provided in 2019-2020 under a contract with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.