Wednesday, November 16, 2005

I'm getting some great essays from my sixth graders:

A Sentient Object


Patrick:

I hear people crying. Why? I can not move. I do not hear this person's heart beating. Is my person dead? I do not know.
I see some light. I guess the skin of my dead person is wearing away. I am being exposed to the sun.
Many years have passed. I do not know how many. However, I can not see the sun anymore. Layers of land have covered me over time. Winds have blown thrown land over me, burying me. Vines and other plants have grown over that layer of land. Glaciers covered up the plants. The ice melted, but more land has come on top of the second layer of land. I am now very deep in the earth.
More years passed. My guess would be more than five millenias [sic]. Huh? What is that stick? It is digging away all the layers of land that have buried me. A hand that looks similar to my person's hand is touching me and feeling me and inspecting me.
"Hey Crispin! Come over here!" yelled the human.
Another human comes. They are both intrigued by me. I am satisfied with my current life, but I think this is a turn in my life. I am probably going to become famous. I know I will be inspected. Humans are so curious these days.
The human is putting me into a bag. He does this very delicately. I am being driven to a building that reads "The New York History Museum." I am being given to another human. This human is inspecting me.
My life has not changed much since that day. Day after day is constant inspection. Huh? Finally! I am being displayed in this place. They put me in a glass case. People from all over the world are coming to see me. I am famous! My life-long dream has come true. I am now living in this glass case, being treated like a king. This a great life. I predict that I will live like this until I become of no use to the humans,
I am now lost. I am now forgotten by humans. However, this will not last long. Soon, my life, the life of the skull of a prehistoric human, will repeat and be luxurious once again.


Excerpts:

Richard:

I am an object that impatiently waits for someone to pick me up and purchase me. … I am, unfortunately, nothing by a mass of pages binded [sic] to a spine. … I love to be written all over, since it shows that my owner loves me and tries to make the best while I last.
I was manufactured by a kind man. I was first printed, ink filling each of my single pages. I then was neatly arranged in order and stiched [sic] onto my friends who help me stay safe from gloomy weathers. …
I have evolved greatly. … My ancestors were exotic scrolls and parchments kept safely in containers, for things objects like me were scarce. Now there are too many of me and my owners [are] careless of my future for they could always replace me. …
I am the always evolving book.


Jun:

I am gray. I am usually round. I can weigh an ounce and I also can weight 100 pounds. I come in many sizes. In the bible [sic], Jacob sleeps using me as a pillow when he runs away from Esau for taking a blessing from his father. It should have been Esau's. The blessing is who will be the chief of the tribe.
In the new testament [sic], the name of Jesus's disciple Peter means my name. I am uncomfortable if you want to use me as a pillow.
… Also in the bible, David uses me in his slingshot and throws me on Goliath's forehead and Goliath dies.


Jasmine:

… The girl reached and grabbed me. I was afraid, but a little bit happy. I have heard legends about famous siblings who got picked up, and [were] never seen again. The girl dropped me into something dark. When I looked up, she had closed the sky.
… When the sky opened once more, the girl picked me up again. Then she pointed me straight down. All the blood rushed to my head.
…I am a pen. Not much, but I am important.


Matthew:

Sometimes I feel sad that I can't be free like all the other creatures of the dessert [sic]. All I can do is watch life go by me. And there will be no time in the future for me to wish any longer, because one day the sand of the desserts will turn into roads. After that the dunes will turn into little homes. The next thing you know, everything will turn into buildings and industrialization.
One thing that makes me feel good about being a cactus is that although I am not able to cause a great impact on the dessert, some people think of me as a historical monument.




A Teacher Who Changed Me

Jun:

Outline

I am talking
Ms. Rennert
conceited
dumb
selfish
mean

A teacher that changed my life was a teacher named Ms. Rennert. She always wore jewlery and bragged every day. She never taught us anything either. She said to just do pages in her workbook. If we didn't understand she would just ask the smart people in the class to help us.

She was very mean. She didn't let us use the bathroom. She allowed drinks in winter but not in summer. She was wrong most of the time. If we said that she was wrong she would punish us. She made up lies and did dumb things that made us laugh secretly. If we laughed and she caught us she would yell. One time she brought a nail clipper and clipped her toe nails.

We all used binders to do our subjects. One time she saw me and four other kids doing work in our binders and she yelled at us for using binders not notebooks. She said she told us to bring notebooks but she never did. It wasn't on the supply list either. She changed me by making me happier to go to school the next year. All my teachers taught us things but Ms. Rennert was the only one who didn't. So I was much happier to go to school the next year and all the other years. I was happy because the teachers actually taught things and weren't mean like Ms. Rennert. Another thing Ms. Rennert did was eat our food. She was obsessed with food. She was very skinny but ate a lot of junk food. When we had chips or cookies, she would eat it. One time at a birthday party she ate all the chips and took the cheese off all the pizza slices and ate it. The pizza was nasty after that. She used to search our bookbags for food. Ms. Rennert did change me though. She made me happy to go to school next year and the year after that. Now I am still happy to go to school knowing that nobody will ever be like Ms. Rennert.


Excerpts:

Diana:
Throughout grades one to five, my class and I never really learned to appreciate social studies. Yes, we had fun making posters of Indians in third grade, but love it… never. Making us read documents of the constitution and the preamble, I learned to love and enjoy everything in store for me. Currently, in sixth grade, I am learning about Egypt and Mesopotamia, and all the interesting facts now leave me in a daze.
After a splendid fourth grade with her, she asked me to be her moniter. With grateful eyes I told her yes. … For a "thank you" gift in Christmas, she gave me a whole make-up set. Although I would have rather gotten something else, it was more than enough.


An essay on a significant age:


Excerpts:

Diana:
With my six-year-old body, I trudged through the vast halls of my new school.
Our teacher, Mrs. Allen, was a welcoming one. She understood our feelings and our melancholiness about leaving our friends from kindergarten.


Richard:
I was afraid that my new teacher would be malicious towards me and that my fellow pupils would despise me.


Patrick:
When I was seven I played all the time. Now that I have matured, I understand that playing is not everything, but back then playing was really very important to me.

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