Appreciation Week

The time of year is coming up where many schools have not only Teacher Appreciation, but Nurse Appreciation and Secretaries' Day, etc. Probably 7-8 years ago our Sunshine Committee started a tradition of doing some sort of decoration for the doors of all the staff. That committee has since dissolved, but I think it's a worthwhile tradition. So I have my Student Council members make and deliver them to continue the custom. I had a hard time coming up with something creative this year, because I feel like we've done everything already. But our mascot is the bears-so this is what the kiddos are making to hang on their doors this year. They are decorating the bag to kind of look like the teacher and then writing a note of appreciation on the back. It's quite an undertaking because I actually only have 5 members in Student Council this year and we have to make 65 to ensure everyone on the staff has one, so my students might end up having to do a few themselves, I don't think they will mind.

This last one is mine. I don't put my name on the list for them to make, but one of the students took it upon herself to do that this year. Isn't this just the most thoughtful message!!!!

We had an aide who retired last year and told me that she kept every single one of the door decorations that they had made-it meant a lot to her. Every once in a while I'll walk into a teacher's room and see theirs from the past years hanging up. And the kids love to make things for their teachers. 

Backward Writing Prompts

We focus a LOT on our writing skills in my class. I try to challenge them and shake things up when I can. This is one of my favorite ways to do that. They are used to me providing the beginning of the story with a prompt...instead, I give them the ending. My favorite ones to do are "and then we had a pet", "and then the cookies were gone" and "then there was a knock at the door". I posted this idea before and Ian Byrd from the Byrdseed site http://www.byrdseed.com/ commented that he liked to give that last prompt idea as dealer's choice-they could use it at the beginning of their story or at the end.

So these are their stories about disappearing cookies:

A Poetry Celebration

I wanted to do something special for the kiddos to celebrate National Poetry Month. We usually write poems and share them with other classes at our school or their parents, but I was inspired to do something different this year. After about 100 phone calls to local establishments trying to find a place that would allow them to read their poems publicly. I decided on taking them to a local Early Childhood Center and that way they could read their poems to Pre-K students who will be in Kinder next year. It was such a nice day! The kiddos all dressed up and read their poems-some with enthusiasm, some pretending they were shy, but all very fluently. 

I let them write about anything they wanted to-after all, poets write about the beautiful, the ugly and the everyday ordinary. I typed them because they would be reading them and often can't read their own handwriting.  Here are the poems they came up with: