Spring Break

Welcome to the world

Not having anything to do

Watching netflix all day

Not answering the phone

Not responding to people

Welcome to the world

Where you are in paradise all day long

Eating chocolate and drinking soda

Enjoy it while it lasts

I can’t wait to join this world

No school, no anything

Welcome to spring break

Two weeks of heaven, paradise

Welcome to the time of your life

Welcome to the world where you don’t have to worry

Welcome to paradise.

Some people may think, what is personification. Well if you think that, It’s about to be answered. Read my poem and try to think about what it means.

Heart vs soul

Light vs dark

Proud vs ashamed

All day I sit there, watching him brag

Watching him be proud

While I, I just sit there being ashamed

Bragging, bragging all day

People taking pictures, not of me, but of him

Tall and proud, pretty and perfect

People walking past me, not noticing me

Two families, totally separate, never talk

People’s lives are being represented by colors

I used to be light, plain and innocent

Now dripping with grey, cloudy and depressed

While he sits there showing off.

He used to be the same as me

Simple and plain.

Then, covered with paint, we were different.

So If you haven’t figured it out, personification means when you give a none human thing, human qualities! Hope you enjoyed.

We started to read poems from a famous poet, Rumi. He has a interesting style, deep and hopeful at the same time. We were asked to write a poem in the style of Rumi, so I wrote Life and Death. I am really proud of this poem, it really sounds like Rumi. Here is my poem.

Rumi Life And Death Style:

Live your life to the fullest

Live your life to the fullest

Because at any moment,

It could all come to an end

Do not worry about death

Focus on living your life

Cherish the moments you have

Love your family, because

They love you more than the world

Enjoy the great life you have

Don’t be scared of what comes next

Just enjoy what you have now

Live your life to the fullest

So we were supposed to make a poem about NY. There were different topics and I picked kindness. Here is my poem. I wrote this because tourists always ask my mom question, and shes always super kind! I really like this poem because it represents NY in a sweet way!

Kindness 

“Where is the A train?”

I hear a young woman say

My mom looks and points

Here is the recipe!

Chapati, what’s that?

Article written by Emma Hirsch, 6th grader

Time to bring back chapatis from the 1980’s! You may be wondering, what the heck are those? Well all your questions are about to be answered.

This is a chapati. You can have beef, egg, vegetable, chicken, anything and everything you want on your chapatis

For those of you who are confused about what this is, it is similar to tacos. Warm crusty bread surrounding whatever you want on the inside. These can be eaten warm or cold, during the day or during the night. Chaptis are eaten by Shabanu, Phulan, Mami, Dadi and the rest of their family. You guys probably don’t know who those people are! Recently I read a fantastic book about a 12 year old girl named Shabanu. Fighting for her life, and getting her job done. She has an older sister and two parents. She has many camels and she forms bonds with each of them, until… well you have to read the book to find out. Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples. I recommend reading it. Chapatis are very popular in the book I mentioned. I have some quotes from the book so you belive me how popular they are!

Page 68, “Dadi hands me a cup of tea and a chapati. I haven’t eaten since yesterday and am hungry.” See, they are always a good snack!

Page 53, “Dadi gestures me away, so I go to search for the bowl and pan to make chapatis”

You may be curious whose job is it to make the chapatis. Well that’s usually the women in the family such as Mama, Phulan, Auntie, or Shabanu. Chapatis are very important for this family because they are nomadic- A person or group that always travels, never stays in one place- So they can’t carry a lot of ingredients around wherever they go. This recipe is simple and easy, and not a lot of ingredients. This was an easy food for the family because it was easy for them to make. If you haven’t already you have to try chapatis, they are amazing!

For more information about chapatis read the book Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples.
         

Dear Diary, This is Shabanu

My life is getting really complicated, really fast. I need some time to write my thoughts down. A few weeks ago I had to do something, that was pretty gross, but I got the job done. I had to birth a camel. So If you any of you are ever going to birth a camel, I would suggest going to the Toba afterwards. Hopefully it would have rained so that you can actually bath at the Toba. Birthing this camel was scary, but a once in a lifetime  especially sense Dadi sold all of our camels. Now I won’t be birthing camels anymore. Taking care of camels isn’t my only job. I help Mama around the house sometimes. Life hasn’t been so perfect. If only grandfather didn’t die. That was sad, and scary. “We must hurry, Dadi and I, to find a burial place before the heat…” page 131.  I just need to pray to Allah, that every thing will be okay.

This is what i thought the dress looked like that mama made.

This is what the camel looked like after I birthed its baby.

I tilt his head to Mecca so his soul can pray… Today was a long, sad, difficult day. I try to sleep, but all I think of is all his stories. After a long night of crying and tossing and turning I awaken. Today was the hardest, saddest, day of my life. All these tasks I had to do for his dead body. I had wash his thin body with the last of our water. Then I prayed, I never prayed harder.

Dear diary, let Jindwadda Ali Abassi’s soul live forever.

This is a picture of Gus and Ben’s drawing of Dadi

This is what I pictured Dadi would look like.

Poetry has always been something that I have enjoyed. When I’m feeling shy and don’t want to talk, I can write my ideas down and turn it into a poem. A few years ago there was a poetry contest for haikus. Our class looked at some of the finalist’s poems. From that we got inspired to write our own. Our poems had to be related to New York City. Poems are more than just some words on paper.  I wanted to make it seem like the person reading this poems was there when it happened. I also wanted it to sound poetic and pretty. I started to think how can I make words pretty. I thought I can make it touching, and descriptive, short but not rushed. Once I picked my topic it was easy from then on. I chose to do 6.am, and the reason is because I used to wake up around 6.am when I was younger, but now I don’t. I sleep later now. I wanted to put my memories on paper. During the summer I go to East Hampton.  my dad and mom are both there. My dad and I would always wake up early and take a walk on the beach with my dog. We would sit in the sand and look up at the sky. Colors mixing around to make a perfect sunrise.  I don’t do that anymore, but I have memories.

Here is my poem:

Morning walks with dad

The sand grabs our feet

I take his hand and look up

Nature cries colors

I was really proud of my poem so I wanted to make another one.

6.am morning walks

I glance at the clouds

I see the colorful sky

Nature cries colors

Step 1

Who The Heck Are You Is a project we have been working on for about 3 weeks. there is 5 (kind of 6) steps to this assignments. We started with picking a person who we wanted to interview. it could be someone in the LREI community or it could be a family member. Then we wrote them a letter asking if we are allowed to interview them. I picked my great uncle. (my dad’s uncle) I picked him because they had a family business and that’s really interesting but also because he was in the army. I knew he had an interesting life and I wanted to learn more! We had some requirements to writing the letter but mostly we could write whatever we wanted. We had to write our email and also see what times we could interview them. I don’t have my letter because we had to mail it to them.

Step 2

After we wrote our letter we had to draft some questions we wanted to ask them. We each wrote 10 questions for our person. Luckily I have my question. these are the questions I asked my uncle…

Click On This To See My Ten Questions

It was hard to ask questions because you had to think of some questions on the spot. For example if I asked Can you tell me about your childhood and he talks about his childhood, then I say what’s your lucky number? It just doesn’t make sense. You sometimes can’t just ask your questions in order, you have to think of follow ups. That was probably the hardest part for me.

Step 2.5

Now we have our letters and we had our questions, were ready to roll. One more thing before the interview, we have to write all of our info down. Step 1 doc is where we could review all of our info. Step 1 is where we decided who we were interviewing, and other stuff like that. It also has a lot of directions so I’m not going to add it onto this post.

Step 3

This is where we can start our interview! So we found a time to interview our person and either called them or talked to them in person. We had to record it and then take facts from the recording. I called my uncle and put him on speaker and recorded it. The interview was actually really fun because I got to learn a lot about my family. I also got to speak to my uncle who I don’t see that much. The interview went well, I had some follow up questions. There was one part where it was silent and that’s when I got nervous. After the silence I quickly thought of a question and we were back on track.

Step 4

This is where we took a recording and put it on paper. We didn’t just write

Q

A

Q

A

Q

A

We actually had to write like journalist. We weaved our words in and out between quotes, and we used descriptive juicy words.

We had to answer the question, so what? Why is this important? I thought it was difficult thinking of my answer, because I wanted to answer the question, but I also wanted it to look and sound good. We used the Step 2 doc, which helped us by organizing our interview.

Click On This To See Step 2 Doc

Step 5

Now we were all done! We transformed from Step 2 Doc, into a normal sheet. We began to edit. We self edited and peer edited. Both of which were extremely helpful. I really enjoyed writing My Final Heck. The whole project was really fun for me. I found some parts hard, but I didn’t give up, i just kept working!

Click This To See My Final Heck!

My goal for the third quarter was to be more organized, especially my locker and seat sack. I haven’t accomplished that goal yet, but I plan on continuing to work on it. That goal isn’t a very learning goal, its more a personal goal. I goal I am working on for learning is participating more. I have half achieved that goal. I participate in class but not as much as I want to. I usually get called on by the teacher when I’m not raising my hang. I like that because it pushes me, and if the teacher hadn’t called on me I probably wouldn’t have raised my hand. Something I often worry about raising my hand, even if I know the answer. I get scared of that because I fear I will be wrong. I have been told by Margaret and my parents and other teachers that if I have the question, others probably do as well. So when I am debating in my head weather to raise my hand or not, I think of that, and sometimes that motivates me to ask my question.

-Emma