The Power of Story

Jacqueline Davies came to our school and talked to us about her amazing books.  When she came, she taught us the three most important things forJacqueline Davies writing a story.  They are the main character, the motivation, and the problem.  She went to each of our classrooms after her demonstration and she gave each kid in our classes a “story worm”.  The story worm is a template for setting up your story.  It has a box for the main character, a box for the motivation, and a box for the problem.  Those boxes are all on the side.  Then there are boxes for the beginning, the two build-ups, the climax, and the ending.

She has just finished the second in the Lemonade War series and it is called the Lemonade Crime; it is coming out in May.  She is now working on her third book in the series.  She wrote several books in different genres before the Lemonade War series.

Some other books she has written are:

Where the Groung Meets Sky by Jacqueline DaviesWere the Ground Meets the Sky

The Boy Who Drew Birds The Boy Who Drew Birds by Jacqueline Davies

HouseVacation The House Takes a Vacation

Lost Lost by Jacqueline Davies

The Night is Singing by Jacqueline Davies The Night is Singing

Tricking the Tallyman Tricking the Tallyman by Jacqueline Davies

Jacqueline Davies has been a great writer for a long time, but she has also been through some tough times in her writing. When she went to college the worst thing happened to her, she lost her confidence.  Later on she regained it.  When she tried to publish her first book it got denied along with her second, third, fourth and fifth but she kept working hard.  Finally, her first book was published and she became an author. She writes many books for kids in a variety of genre.

You can be like Jacqueline Davies and be creative. You can write a good story, read it and feel like you’re traveling in the book. Sometimes you can be so into a book that you really feel like you’re in a book and forget everything that is happening.  That is partly why Jacqueline Davies is a writer.

Visit her website at:

http://www.jacquelinedavies.net

Our school thinks Jacqueline Davies books are so good, every single kid in the fifth grade read The Lemonade War including us! Jacqueline Davies has been a popular author in our school for a while and the people who read her books are excited to read her other books.

Thank you Jacqueline Davies for sharing your love of writing with us and for allowing us to use several of your photos from your website.

Reported by: Zoelle and Ceci

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Chickering School is a place where children learn, laugh, grow, care, and make a difference! Making a difference can sometimes be hard, but recycling makes a difference, and it’s easy too.

Chickering recycles. Daily, the students and staff recycle their paper, and plastic bottles. Kids from each class and 5th grade student council members are assigned the job of bringing the paper and plastic bottles down to the recycling bins.

Every Friday Mrs. Gladstone comes to our lunch and helps us recycle. We sort everything from plastic, to food for the pig farmer. The students get the chance to go up themselves and sort all the recycling into the different bins.

We interviewed some kids on what they thought about recycling. They all had different perspectives about recycling, but all knew that recycling was good for the school, town and Earth. Here are some of the wonderful things the kids mentioned about recycling and the school recycling system.

“Chickering School does recycle enough but should recycle everyday instead of just on Fridays,” Says K.B. (a student.)

Will (another student) “feels really good about recycling, and every time he recycles he hopes he really helped the world today!”

We were able to interview two teachers, Mr. Wadness and Mrs. Atkinson. We also interviewed Mrs. Gladstone, who runs Earth Day and is the creator of Waste Free Friday. She is a big part in our community when it comes to recycling. These are their interviews.

Interview w/ Mrs. Gladstone, Mr. Wadness, and Mrs. Atkinson

We hoped you enjoyed our report about recycling and consider recycling more, and see how it is good. You can help your town and school in many ways by recycling! The point of recycling is that we all come together and make the world a better place. We should start thinking about our generation’s future. Thanks for reading!

 

Reported By: Katie B, Catherine, Elizabeth E, Laura, Tara