It thrills us this time of year to know that many students have completed (or are close to completing) the first of their six CORE Blackbird & Company ELA units and are brainstorming ideas for the Section 5 culminating project.

To celebrate this season, click through here to download a FREEbie Section 5 Planning Worksheet.

Section 5 is the week when students get to step outside of the rhythm of reading, contemplating, and journaling and create a project to celebrate the story’s wonder! This project is a throwback to a Blackbird and Company limited edition “Section 5 Kit” tied to City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. We provided the box, a lightbulb shaped jar, black paint, glow-in-the-dark paint, paintbrush, Sharpie, and left the rest to the student’s imagination.

Earth is, of course, being ravaged by a series of apocalyptic events known as the Disaster. Light is one of Ember’s most important resources. Without light, the city will cower in complete darkness. Around the clock darkness. Not good. It is this terror of darkness that drives the story. So when the great lamps that light the city begin to flicker, Lina and Doon have a quest set before them. With blackouts and shortages someone needs to take action! Why not our twelve-year-old protagonists?

For this Section 5 project, the student decorated the outside of the box with juicy words and quotes from the story, painted the inside of the box black represent the problem facing the people of Ember, and poured the glow-in-the-dark paint into the light bulb. Ultimately the little project is an amazing advert!

Now its your turn.

Download the FREE Section 5 Planning Worksheet and get started on your build week.

It’s Section 5 Season!

Our live online sessions meet once a week for five weeks to dive deep into great stories. Each week our exceptional instructors will lead discussion of the reading and offer insight to inspire students to think deeply about the story’s action. Conversing and thinking about books is a terrific spark for original ideas, and original ideas motivate students to write! After the video gathering, your student will submit weekly writing and receive individualized written feedback from the teacher.

Space is limited to 10 students per group. Price includes curriculum.

Enrollment is OPEN click through here!

Welcome to Blackbird & Company! If you’re looking for a fun and inspirational language arts program, we have everything you need. Whether you are in a classroom, a homeschool, or an independent study program, we want to empower you, encourage you, and give you confidence to Take Flight and begin the adventurous journey of literacy with one of our Grade Level Collections.

Kindergarten through 2nd Grade

3rd through 5th Grade

6th through 8th Grade

9th through 12th Grade

Many thanks to our resident artist, Sara!

Would you believe me if I told you that I wrote my first poem when I was six years old? Even when I was in elementary school, I wrote little illustrated verses almost every week. I’d be too embarrassed to share those verses here, but even before I turned seven, writing was my natural outlet for my emotions.

Writing has been to me what reading is to Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird: natural, unconscious, without translation. Breathing. Even when I don’t have the time or inclination—or even when I feel discouraged with my writing—I’ll sense the urge to write poetry as if it were an urge to find air while underwater.

Flash forward from the six-year-old Constance to high school sophomore Constance.

I met Kim sometime after finishing my freshman year of high school—she was Mrs. B. to me then. She was the first writing teacher of mine whom I actually admired. I still remember meeting her for the first time, showing her a couple of my poems, and being stunned by how her suggestion to change one word revolutionized the tone of an entire stanza.

Kim introduced me to the world of submissions, and helped me get published and recognized by various literary journals and contests such as the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. More importantly, she taught me to value the workshop environment, and constantly championed my decision to become an English major in college.

So that’s where I find myself today—a sophomore English major at USC. My writing-related dreams include studying poetry in Paris, interning at Poets and Writers, Inc., and using my love for words as a human rights lawyer… but that’s all still in the air.

The only thing I can tell you right now that is substantially relevant is that writing, to me, is like breathing.

———————

Constance Chan has interned for Kim since 2011 and has helped develop curriculum with Blackbird & Company Educational Press. Her writing has been recognized by domestic and international journals and contests such as the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards and USC’s Undergraduate Writers’ Conference. She is an English major, human rights minor, and Thematic Option Honors student at the University of Southern California. She is passionate about imagist poetry, breakdancing, and leftover Chinese takeout on those days when you don’t have time to cook dinner.