It was a short week, but a long week. Don't we know that is true? The short weeks are always the ones that drag. To make it worse, we had Curriculum Night on Thursday, so that was a 12 hour day, leaving me pretty drained by Friday.
Here is a short round-up of the week, filtered through "blue space, green space, and river flow."
Blue Space -- It has been blue skies in most of my reading classes, as they grab on to what we are doing and run with it. I still have one struggling class, which happens to meet during the lunch period, and we don't eat until near the end, so the challenges have been great. I am not sure how much learning we are actually getting done. I have decided this is probably one of those classes I will have to try a million things with before I find a way that works.
Green Space -- I witnessed several speech students stepping out of their comfort zones and doing their team presentations on the larger questions, themes, and global connections in picture books such as Yertle the Turtle and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The ones most nervous were the ones most happy when they powered through and made it happen. This is the incredible power of overcoming fear of public speaking!
I also discovered that one of my sixth grade creative writing students writes beautiful sentences naturally. He read something he wrote in our 10 minute "crash and burn," and it was pretty darn good. I was impressed.
River Flow -- On Thursday evening I got to meet some parents. Instead of a sign-in sheet I had them fill out a small form on which they told me something special or admirable about their child. I got some rave reviews on kids -- mostly things I've already seen and figured out, but some surprises as well -- and I was very happy to have given them a chance to brag on their kids. I only had 7 minutes with each period, and some had only a couple of parents attend, so we were able to sit casually and talk. I told them of my focus on Mastery, Identity, and Creativity, and the ways these show up in our learning. The parents of reading students were thrilled with the idea of the Global Read Aloud we will be doing in October and November, and the parents of speech & debate students were excited about the many ways we practice public speaking, going beyond strict debate and using a variety of simulations, videos, and other creative approaches. I felt good at the end of the night despite the late hour.
Other good news from the week: Florida Gulf Coast University's International Dept. wants to talk to me about how they can support the Global Read Aloud going forward. This came about in my conversations with Rebecca Totaro. She has been bugging me to tell her ways the university could get involved with K-12 education. This coming week I will be visiting the PTSA meeting, along with Deb Felice, to thank them for the grant money for the books. Four teachers at my school are participating, and we are matched up with several classrooms in Canada (Ontario and British Columbia), as well as Indiana, Michigan, New York, California, and Oklahoma. This is an exciting opportunity for us all.
Given that Friday was "fried day" after the long day Thursday, I started the day with Creative Writing doing a story roundabout. One of the students had purchased John Green's Turtles All the Way Down from the book fair for my classroom library, so I pulled some sentences from it to get them going. We then had a contest for the best and worst stories. I took this picture of the story titles that were entered:
Everyone enjoyed the writing and the reading aloud of the stories. A good time was had by all!
This week the CLMS Book Club will have its kick-off on Tuesday after school. I have 12 kids signed up on the Google Classroom, and more who have told me they were planning on being there. At first I was worried about getting a response, so I am absolutely thrilled that this much interest is being shown right from the start. It looks like it will be an eclectic group. More on that as we get going.
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