Category Archives: Events

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Poem in My Pocket Day 2009

What a full day! Everywhere you turned today at Barrow, someone was sharing a poem. I saw custodians, secretaries, teachers, and students stopping one another in the hallways and sharing their poetry. The media center was very busy today with poetry readings all day. Students read poems that they wrote as well as favorite poems that they selected. I loved seeing somany students sit in front of their peers and share poetry. The end of the day was a special treat when the whole 5th grade came and shared their poetry. For 90 minutes, they shared. Everyone shared one poem and then a line formed for students to read more. We finally had to cut the line off so we could go home! Here are some pictures from our day in the media center and a few video clips.  I hope to load a video of the great 5th grade poems tomorrow.  What a great way to end National Poetry Month!

Also,  check out our very own Ms. Olin, who wrote a poem just for today’s Poem In Your Pocket Day.

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Poem In Your Pocket Preview

It’s hard to believe that our month-long poetry celebration is coming to an end, but we’re going out in style. Tomorrow is Poem In Your Pocket Day. The teachers and I have worked with students to write and select poetry to carry in our pockets tomorrow. Poems were also placed in the lounge for faculty and staff to put in their pockets. Now, the media center is transformed into a poetry cafe and we have back-to-back classes the entire day to come and read poetry. Each table has a tablecloth, poetry books, battery-operated candle, and die-cuts. Students will enjoy a lollipop while listening to their peers and teachers read their poems. Here are some pictures to give you a sneak peek at what our poetry cafe will look like tomorrow.   We’ve encouraged everyone in the school (teachers, students, paraprofessionals, secretaries, custodians, lunchroom staff, EVERYONE!) to carry a poem tomorrow.  It’s going to be great.   See you tomorrow.

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Poetry Reading!

We would like to thank the UGA Athletic Association for selecting our school as one of the sites for their Mission Renewal Day. They donated 23 poetry books to our media center and came today to read the poetry in every classroom in the school. After reading the poetry, the readers assisted teachers and students in classrooms with creating poetry and other reading activities. Watch a video here of some of the readers reading poetry and working with students. It was a fantastic morning of celebrating poetry. Thanks to the UGA Athletic Association for promoting poetry during National Library Week and Poetry Month.

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Battle of the Books

Our 5th grade Battle of the Books team competed today in the Clarke County School District Battle fo the Books. Thirteen elementary schools competed in two preliminary rounds of questioning. Our team, Whit Davis Elementary, and Timothy Road Elementary made it into the final battle. It was an extremely close match, but we are happy to announce that Barrow Elementary won the CCSD Battle of the Books for this year. The trophy now sits in our media center for one year until the next battle is held in 2010. Congratulations again to Neal, Jared, Chow Chow, Nicole, and Serena. Thanks for reading so carefully and representing our school so well!

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It’s Poetry Month!

As March comes to a close, we are excited about poetry in the media center. April is National Poetry Month. Today, I setup some displays of poetry books for students, teachers, and community members to enjoy. Tomorrow, I will be talking with all teachers at our faculty meeting about making April a celebration of poetry. On April 30th, we will celebrate National Poem in Your Pocket day by carrying poems in our pockets, having poetry slams in the media center, displaying our poems in a variety of ways, and recording our poetry to share with others. I can’t wait to share some of my favorite poems with you, and I hope you will share your poems with me, too.

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Battle of the Books

For the past three months, students in fifth grade have been reading up a storm. Forty-seven students were involved in the Battle of the Books. Teams of five students read the ten books and practiced answering questions about the books. On March 19th, we held a school battle. There were two preliminary rounds and one final battle. It was a very close match between all of the teams, which goes to show how involved the students were in reading their books. The team advancing to the district battle on April 2nd is “What Happens When Kids Read”. Congratulations Nicole, Neal, Serena, Chow Chow, and Jared.

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Book Fair Premiere

Our Spring book fair is off to a great start. Today students and teachers dressed like stars and walked down our red carpet to begin their book shopping. Our morning BTV broadcast was live from the red carpet and students and teachers were interviewed about their reading lives and what they were looking forward to at the book fair. Stop by all this week to do some shopping and help raise funds for our media center. With funding for next year undecided, our book fair may become a main source of funding for buying the materials that we need to support our learners. We’re open Monday and Wednesday from 7:30AM-4:00PM, Tuesday from 7:30AM-7:00PM, and Friday 7:30AM-1:00PM.  Stop by and shop like a star!

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Athens Banner Herald Article

In case you missed it, here is a link to the Athens Banner Herald article written earlier this week about our author visit from Deborah Wiles.  Take a moment to read it, and feel free to post comments at the bottom of the article with your thoughts about the day.  We need to be advocates for the important work that we do in our school.

Deborah Wiles dances with PreK-1st Grades to the lullaby, One Wide Sky

Deborah Wiles dances with PreK-1st Grades to the lullaby, One Wide Sky

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Student Media Festival

On March 16th, we held the Barrow Student Media Festival. This was an opportunity for students to showcase their technology projects. We had 25 particpants and 10 of our students are advancing to the district media festival. Congratulations to all who participated. By clicking the links below, you can visit the ten projects that are advancing.

Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project 4
Project 5
Project 6
Project 7
Project 8
Project 9
Project 10

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Deborah Wiles

It’s hard to believe that our visit with author Deborah Wiles is over. Students and teachers had a wonderful time listening to Mrs. Wiles talk about her books and her love of writing. She shared her writing notebooks with us and helped us to see that her stories come from things that happened to her in her own life. She even showed us funny things like how she turned her rotten red-headed brother into a girl in Love, Ruby Lavender and how she turned her Aunts into chickens. Students are filled with ideas of where they can find the stories in their own lives, and we will be working on personal narrative writing a lot over the next few weeks and publishing that writing in a variety of formats. Some of the writing will probably even be on this blog. Let’s all find our stories and find ways of sharing them with one another.