Haiku and one about conifers

Great Blue Heron sits

Great Horned Owl attacks the nest

Who is the Greatest

Trash

Discarded food wrappers

Stepped on

With one lazy ant listlessly triple checking

For remains

That the squirrel missed

And the mouse

And the legions of other, more industrious ants

Resin drizzled, or maybe rosin dappled,

Flecked with sticky tar-lets

Last fall’s trash

Useless,

Unless-

They’ve all missed one tiny conifer seed

In which case

In time

With luck

Through battles too slow to attend

For light

For Earth

From gnawing teeth

From gnashing pincers

From fungal blight

From the toothless, stomach-acid mouths of slugs and snails

In time

And in more time

And still more,

This piece of forest trash may

With luck

With light

With Earth

With water enough to slake its thirst

Morph

Into a forest giant

Mast straight

With a full rigging of green sails

Billowing yellow dust in hopes of birthing more

Resin drizzled, or maybe rosin dappled

Trash,

Bill Stewart             May, 2012

Harboring dreams of future trees.

Nature Poetry

Nature Poems:  We are working on Nature Poetry for the East Leverett Trails. I wrote a couple of poems inspired by our field trip there. The first is sort of a "Who am I" poem:

Goodyera pubescens

By Bill Stewart

May 15, 2012

I see it at my feet

And I freeze.

That distinctive pattern on its back--

No mistaking rattlesnake.

I wait for the ch-ch-ch-chchch

Warning me to leave this varmint alone

But it’s silent as the grave.

Buried in the leaves,

Veins pulsing slightly in the wind,

I shoot it.

And it’s frozen forever in my lens:

Rattlesnake plantain

Music for Ms. Casey

http://vimeo.com/29330743
Happy Retirement, Genie Casey!
We will miss you so much at LES. In your honor, I have created three songs for you on Garageband, each in a different genre:  Latin, Reggae, and Rock.
Enjoy the silly music (featuring the vocal talents of yours truly. my wife:  the lovely and musically gifted Sarah Dolven, and our delightful children).
Have a marvelous retirement with Brian! We were all inspired by your trip to New Zealand and your Blog!
All our best,
-Bill

The three songs go with a slideshow of the 2011 Invention Fair, which was a hallmark of Ms. Casey's 4th grade class experience.  There is a brief gallery of old friends dressed as explorers from long ago.

Invention

My riddle of the day:

My first is not out

My second’s for air

My third is when someone can’t play:

it’s not fair!

Together we’re new

Alone or a few

Our Mother is need

Inspiration’s the seed.



Some great videos on Invention!  The first few are by an artist/inventor named Arthur Ganson. Wow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VBXQxoP814
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8HZi_QoDVI
http://arthurganson.co.cc/machine-with-a-fly-arthur-ganson/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFG-Lk9c2CI

The next is a video about a man in Holland who creates sand beasts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA&feature=email

The last is a great site for kids to try playing with virtual machine parts, care of Wallace and Gromit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/wallaceandgromit/wallaces-workshop/

Fun times!

Answer to the riddle?  N-O-I-T-N-E-V-N-I
(Backwardize it to see the answer, of course!  And forgive the shun/tion play on sound.)

Writing Web

Here is a link to a graphic organizer on Prezi I created.  It is a writing web I created to the prompt: "What I like to do in my free time..." (taken from an MCAS long composition writing prompt): http://prezi.com/m85kwon5bqlm/ultimate/ 
Enjoy!

NWP

Funding for the National Writing Project has been cut this year, and funding for next year looks bleak.
I attended the summer institute in 1995, just prior to coming to teach in Leverett. The Western Mass Writing Project, based at the University of Massachusetts, is a fabulous resource for writers and writing teachers. The summer institute is a phenomenal place to hone the craft of teaching writing and to be a writer: to relearn the craft through writing and giving and receiving feedback on writing. The third component on the summer institute is to research best practices in writing and share those practices with other teachers, both in the summer institute and, later, throughout the academic year with colleagues and in other schools as teacher- trainers and mentors.
Writing is communication and communication is essential to our democracy.  The power of the written word has sparked revolutions across the Middle East and overthrown despots and dictators.  As we strive to race for the top in Education in the U.S., we must not give short shrift to Writing in a push to promote Science and Math.

The National Writing Project has a new web site with some great links, tools, prompts, and ideas: digitalis.nwp.org


A letter from Anne Herrington of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project follows:

As you may or may not know, funding for the National Writing Project has
been cut from this year's federal budget and likely also from the following
year's budget.  While WMWP will be able to continue most programs for next
year, after that, we will have to seriously curtail most everything,
including Summer Institute and other summer courses.  This is very serious.


Please lend your voice, your words, to advocate to Congress to restore
funding for NWP. 

How? Blog or email our Congressmen.  Click on the following link at
Cooperative Catalyst
- http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/

and then click on the link to #blog4nwp for a fuller explanation.  It's
important to act as soon as possible.  The more blogs, the better.

Spring has sprung

Simple machines: hammering nails outside, building ramps, levers, pulleys, block and tackles, lifting cars with the screw of a jack, wedging things up, open, and in, exploring the impact of wheels on friction and force, gearing up for inventing and the invention fair: that's spring in grade 4!

Mnemonic:  I Want Popcorn When Sam Leaves

Inclined Plane, Wheel and Axle, Pulley, Screw,Wedge, Lever (and Gear?!? or is a gear just a wheel and axle with little levers on it?)

How many simple machines on a tricycle anyway?