My apologies in advance for the number of photos in this post. We had a lot going on this week! First off, it was Literacy Week at the Kennedy. We had Mr. Marshall come in to read to the class, students dress up as their favorite literary characters, and some quality reading time with the 6th graders. We also were invited to check out some impressive STEAM work done by the 3rd graders, which you can see in some of the pictures below. By far my favorite event of the week happened on Friday at 2:15: D (Drop), E (Everything), A (And), R (Read). What a wonderful way to end the week! With the vast curriculum I'm required to teach my students, I definitely don't provide them with as much independent reading time as I'd like to. Having those twenty minutes for the kids to be silently engrossed in their books was SO nice though, it makes me wish we could do that more. It didn't hurt that I got to join them...

On Wednesday, there was the superintendent's breakfast for the Student of the Quarter awards. This quarter, the focus was on leadership, and the two fourth graders to earn this recognition were Mason and Dylan. Both boys aren't the most outspoken students in the room, which is a quality that is sometimes thought of when it comes to leadership. Rather (and more importantly), both boys share this humble reliability that Mrs. O'Keefe and I really appreciate. They consistently work hard, remain positive, display an eagerness to learn, and are kind to their peers, which makes them role models to their classmates. They are super deserving of this leadership award, and we're really proud of them. Congrats boys!

Poetry is HARD. Honestly, it's probably the hardest genre for most kids. This is because of all the figurative language and layers of meaning found in many poems. This week, we explored the words "literal" and "figurative", and discussed how it's important to recognize when poets are being nonliteral with the words, phrases, and lines they use in their poems. One really enjoyable aspect of the poetry unit is how applicable the poetry vocabulary and reading strategies are to song lyrics, because in reality, songs are poems. I have a collection of lines and verses from songs that I weave into my lessons throughout the unit, and the kids really seem to enjoy it. (Although I will say that unfortunately nowadays, it's not as easy to find songs on the radio that have one hundred percent school appropriate lyrics...)

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Zack and Aden. Both boys are incredibly bright, creative, and full of energy. Both have done well this week with poetry because that "digging deeper" thinking and analysis of poems comes naturally to them. In the same way, they excel when it comes to creative writing. They are both able to write in a way that allows the reader to picture what's going on in the story, which makes it fun to read. Both boys have bright futures ahead of them, that's for sure.


And to conclude this post, I have one last thing to say: GO PATS!