Ms. Hill’s Class Brews Up the Poetry Café

On January 30th, 2026, Ms. Hill's 3rd and 4th grade class hosted a Poetry Café to showcase her students’ learning. For this event, Ms. Hill was inspired by cafés that host open mic nights. By sharing their poems in front of a live audience, the class was able to mimic the format of an open mic night. 

Photo: A grade 3/4 student reciting poetry

The 3rd and 4th graders showcased their creativity and practiced their public speaking skills by writing original poems and sharing them aloud in front of an audience that included other students and teachers. All the lower school classes were able to attend. The whole class’ day was café-themed. This included practicing counting change, taking food orders, using measuring cups to practice fractions, looking into recipes, and other fun activities. 

The students’ poetry work was first inspired by learning about Iran and New Year’s traditions. The class read a traditional Iranian poem, and they decided from there to look more into poetry. The students worked for about a month perfecting their poems, including creating illustrations for them. The main goals of this project were to improve public speaking and poetry skills. The students’ poems strengthened their abilities to use figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, and they were challenged to include four different types of figurative language in their work.

“I would say it was a success,” Ms. Hill concluded. “It’s a muscle that we’re going to continue to work on, but I would say we did a pretty good job for one of our first tries.” Thank you to Ms. Hill’s 3rd and 4th grade class for using this event as an opportunity to share their creativity with their fellow Newtonians. Well done, all!