A Shakespeare Challenge

Have you ever heard of Shakespeare Week?

What?  You haven’t?  Really?

Well, don’t worry; until this year, we hadn’t either.  Nobody had.  That’s because it’s a new celebration begun just this year by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.  It was celebrated for the first time ever this past week, March 17-21, 2014, by 3,000 schools all over the U.K., and one school that we know of in the United States.   We are the one school!  We joined the festivities related to the Bard this past week, and we’re not done yet.  We’re going to keep going until we celebrate his 450th birthday, which is on April 23rd.

 

Shakespeare's Birthplace

Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon, England

 Photo Credit: floato via Compfight

In order to commemorate the life of the man who most influenced English literature, we have read Hamlet, watched video clips of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy (including a farce on Gilligan), created new words, hurled Shakespearean insults, studied the Bard’s biography, completed word games, memorized lines, and virtually visited Stratford-on-Avon.   On our last day of school before our Easter break, we plan to party hardy with the Bard, making his 450th birthday his best ever.

 …there was a star danced, and under that was I born. (Much Ado About Nothing, II,i, 335)

In honor of this event, we’d like to Skype another class for our first annual Shakespeare Challenge game.  We’ll ask your class questions, and you ask us.  The winner gets a prize.

Do you dare to accept our challenge?

Mercutio: A challenge, on my life.

Benvolio: Romeo will answer it.

Mercutio: Any man that can write may answer a letter.

Benvolio: Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.

                                                                                                  Romeo and Juliet   II, iv, 8-12

Answer our post with a comment letting us know if you are up to a challenge on April 16th, sometime between 9 and 11 am, Eastern Standard Time.

Until then, visit some of our Shakespeare posts from April 2013 or try some of the sites above.

What did you learn about our friend Will Shakespeare?

 

Silver and Gold

Welcome to the spring 2014 Student Blogging Challenge! (Hey, Kids! register here. )We hope to find some new friends and revisit some old friends this spring. I am reminded of a Girl Scout song I learned years ago, “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

Last year, we met some blogging buddies at Huzzah! and in Mrs. Krebs’ class.

This year, we have recently been introduced to some students in the classes of Mrs. Rovira and Mrs. Emerick .  We hope these students will become our new blogging buddies, a.k.a. high tech pen pals.

Whether we call them friends, buddies, or pals, we hope to find more of them through this spring’s Student Blogging Challenge.

Making friends around the world

Making friends around the world

 

Making friends through service

Making friends through service

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”
Muhammad Ali

 

What makes your best friend “the best”? 

 

 

 

 

Making more friends: Serving Others and the 2014 Student Blogging Challenge

Today is a great day!  We have some wonderful news to report.  We are making new “friends” around the globe by serving others.  At the beginning of the school year, we wrote a post about a summer book we read, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park.  It’s based on the true story of Salva Dut who was a war refugee from Sudan, immigrated to the United States, and eventually made his way back to Sudan in order to drill wells so that the people who live in remote villages can have safe drinking water.  He even drills wells for the villages of the tribe who attacked his family and village.  Last week we had a Glow-in-the-Dark dance with all proceeds going to Water for South Sudan.  We raised $174.60.  It costs $15,000 to drill a well, but we hope every little bit helps.  If we each add a drop, eventually we’ll have a full bucket of water.

 

Also in February, our whole school participated in various fundraising activities for Shelter Box, an organization that provides aid to families in the throes of disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, or earthquakes.  Like Salva, these people have lost their homes and must find a way to live amid chaos.  Shelter Box provides boxes which contain tents, propane stoves, water, clothing, and even coloring books for children.  Each class in our school tried to raise $100, so that together we could purchase a $1000 Shelter Box.  The 6th grade class sold Valentine’s Day candy and raised $450- this included our student Cooper’s donation of all her birthday gifts given as a donation instead of as presents to her; the 7th grade held a used book sale and raised $374.69; the 8th graders did chores around their homes and donated their earnings to raise $120.  Our elementary students worked hard, too:  grades K-5 completed these service projects, respectively: brownie bake sale; Hershey’s kisses for your Valentine and chores at home; bake sale; pencil sale and cookie raffle; penny war- grades 4 & 5.  We think our school may have raised enough to send two Shelter Boxes.  We find out the grand total tomorrow!

book sale 003
After working hard to help new friends around the globe, we’d now like to connect with new friends through the 2014 Student Blogging Challenge!  We are already registered as a class, and this week we will register our student blogs.  We’d love to connect with you!

Let us know how you make a difference in the world!

What service do you do to make the world a better place?