It always blows my mind how brave kids are when they can get up on stage in front of a large crowd of people and recite lines from memory. I could literally never do it! So, needless to say, I was so proud of all of our fourth graders (Petra, Lacy, Dylan, Aden, Rakia, Shay, Leila, Annabel R., Annabel C., and Kaleah, with Lauren helping out behind the scenes) who were part of the school drama club performance on Monday morning. It was a nice way to kick off our week (especially considering I got back from a wedding in Texas at 2am on Sunday night/Monday morning......)

Our focus in ELA right now is writing about texts. The kids learned that giving feedback to student work is no walk in the park, as one of their tasks was to read six sample student responses to a text-based question and order them based on what's expected of this type of response. They then had to choose one of these sample responses and "play teacher". They had to type up feedback using the terms we associate with text-based writing (central idea, evidence, explanations, sentence stems, etc). Pretending like they were talking directly to the student who wrote the response, they needed to include some positive feedback, as well as specific suggestions for improvement. It was neat to see them take on that role, and on Thursday I presented the kids with an extra credit opportunity that again put them in my "teacher shoes". In this case, the goal is to design a lesson to teach the class about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I've already had a ton of kids share their ideas with me, and I'm loving the creativity I'm seeing in how they're presenting the information. Like I told them, if you can teach something to someone, then you really have to know it. So, by designing this lesson, participating students are strengthening their understanding of these parts of speech.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Owen and Viola. Owen was inspired by his classmate Ryker's extra credit project on the country of Monaco (Lacy also presented an extra credit project this week!), and he began doing his own research on a topic of his choosing. He even came in early the other day to use a Chromebook and find pictures to go along with his research. I love when kids elect to take time outside of school to do anything educational, like extra writings or projects. I can't wait for Owen to present his findings to the class! Viola is a gem. She is just consistently on. She works hard in class, she listens, and she uses the resources provided to her to ensure she's handing in high-quality work. She's grown so much in both her reading and writing this year, and she has a heart of gold. I really enjoy being both Owen and Viola's teacher!