How the Elephant Gots Its Trunk
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Category Archives: Performances
The Lost Twins
The Necklace Play Performance
Here is the video of our play entitled The Necklace, which is based on the classic short story by French writer Guy de Maupassant. The video was edited entirely by Taylor R. Be prepared to turn up your volume. As with many student productions, it is sometimes difficult to hear all the lines. Videos of our other performances, The Tell-Tale Heart and A Retrieved Reformation will be posted as soon as the kids finish editing them.
Another Set of Amazing, Awesome, Extraordinary Students!
Another fantastic group of students were acknowledged at our assembly last month including Maya G. and Suzy F. as Students-of-the-Month for December. These girls have been at the top of the class all year. SOTM for January include December W. and Brianna S. December has worked super hard to improve her math skills while also being a great citizen. Brianna approaches everything she does with enthusiasm and kindness. For February, our Students of the Month are Abby S. and Rubie E. Abby and Rubie choreographed and organized our JuJu on that Beat flash mob (see the shaky video below). Abby is at the top of the class academically, and Rubie has been setting a high standard acting in our upcoming performance of The Nose. Congrats to all our Students-of-the-Month!
We also want to acknowledge our finalists for the Rotary Club Student of the Year Award. This award goes to a student with a long history of academic excellence and good citizenship at CPE. This year’s finalists included Suzy F., Maya G., and Jonathan C. from our classroom. Other finalists included Lindsey S. from Mr. Hadley’s class and Cinch E. and Kevin G. from Mrs. Torrey’s. Kevin ended up winning the award (Congrats, Kevin!), but all of these students are deserving of extra-loud applause for their super success at CPE. Kudos to all of you!
Here’s that sha
ky video of the Juju dance. Cheers to all the students who participated!
Anybody Seen Br’er Rabbit?
All the big names in theater reviews have:
“Br’er Rabbit and the Gingercakes” makes for a merry romp” — The New Jersey Times
“Fifth graders swipe Br’er Rabbit back from Disney! They re-create Disney-esque magic on their Central Point stage!” — LA Kindergarten Review
“Gingercakes is an absolutely unique performance. From beginning to end, it demands your full attention.” — Ed Grisfield, reviewer for Entertainment Last Night
That’s right. The reviews are in and CPE 5th Graders’ adaption of Br’er Rabbit is a monster hit. Thursday’s Literacy Night performance of the trickster tale starred the signing and dancing of Sidney L. as Br’er Rabbit and Olivia F. as Auntie Remus. Yuri G. garnered big laughs in her role as Br’er Fox, and Jaden R. is sure to be nominated for an Oscar for her uniquely original portrayal of Br’er Moose. The entire cast and crew were fabulous from beginning to end.
If you missed it, Br’er Rabbit: The Musical will return to the stage at an upcoming assembly. Stay tuned!
Update for Jan. 19
Happy MLK Day! On Friday, students read a play about Dr. King’s childhood and a non-fiction article about his legacy. In class this week students are continuing their new book clubs with daily and nightly reading assignments and finishing up their unit on multi-digit multiplication with a chapter test on Thursday, among other subjects. Here’s the homework for this week: Tuesday. Jan. 20; Wednesday, Jan 21st; Thursday, Jan. 22nd.
Congrats to out 500 Club members: Josiah, McKenna, JJ, Jaden F., Rayden, Hailee H., Jazmin, Kara, Jonathan J., Alyssa, Symphony, Sidney, and Molly. These kids have each logged at least 500 minutes of homework reading over the last five weeks. They’ll celebrate their endeavor with a 500 Club party at lunchtime on Thursday, Jan. 22nd. Meanwhile, students who logged 300 minutes or less during that period took home progress reports on Friday that must be signed by an adult.
Room 15 kids completed their radio plays: The Emperor’s New Clothes (starring Hailee H. as the Emperor and Emma as the Empress); The Sword and the Stone (starring Ricky as Arthur and Jordan as Merlin); and Cidro-ella (starring Sidney as Cidro). Click on the title to listen. To download and save on your own device, right click on the media player that pops up and select “Save Audio As.”
Finally, don’t forget about our tree plant field trip on Thursday, Feb. 5th. It’s one of the best trips of the year and we need lots of chaperones. Let me know if you can join us.
Class Plays Lead to Nomination
So I just learned that Emma Z’s performance in our class play, Anton & Grace Hopper, has gotten her nominated for “Best Lead Actress in Fable” award! These little class plays are designed to build reading fluency through repetitive reading and speaking skills through performance. We don’t require that kids memorize their parts (whichg is why you see some kids carrying their scripts) but memorization certainly helps the play.
In Anton & Grace Hopper, which is based on the Ant and the Grasshopper fable, Emma Z. stars as Grace, Josiah B. stars as Anton, Haylee B. and Julian C. serve as narrators, and Rayden G. fills in admirably for Mrs. Marrow, the teacher.
In Peter Rabbit, Giovanni O. stars as Peter, Aiden B. stars as Mr. MacGregor, and Symphony K. serves as the narrator.
Room 15 Update for March 3
New book clubs begin Monday. They include three great books for 5th graders: Sign of the Beaver, Jungle Dogs, and Frindle. Students will take home a reading guide each night to help them dig deeper into the stories. Kalli and Trevor will be presenting The Daily Platypus and CPETV (see below for episode 2) to the School Board on Tuesday Night. And in Math, kids will be learning about finding the area of circles and reviewing space figures. Here the math homework for this week: Monday, March 3; Tuesday, Mar. 4; Wednesday, Mar. 5; Thursday, Mar. 6. There’s no school on Monday, March 10th. Teachers will be attending training sessions and preparing report cards. Finally, the kids did a great job on their Revolutionary War plays last Friday. Unfortunately, only one was of sufficient enough volume to result in a video. Take six minutes to watch Eagles Over the Battlefield:
A Dickens Christmas
The snow days and delayed starts wreaked havoc with our Christmas plays, but the kids managed to patch together “radio drama” versions, which are available now, just in time for Christmas! Click on a title to listen to Escape from the Blacking House, which is based on Dickens’ childhood, and Gabriel Grub, which is one of Dickens’ early Christmas redemption stories, predating Scrooge by seven years. Each play is about twelve minutes, but the Grub play comes with a warning…just as the gypsy says in the first scene, it is indeed too scary for small children. Kids, what really happened to Gabriel? Find out by reading Chapter 29 of The Pickwick Papers (click here). Merry Christmas!