Read Across America Week

Aside from dressing up as book characters, my library and school participated in Read Across America by decorating bulletin boards and doors and by having a "DEARathon" in the library! I had students signed up to read silently in the library all during that week. Unfortunately, we had two snow days the week of RAA, but we continued it the next week and had a lot of fun doing it. Teachers and students worked really hard to come up with creative ideas.

Here are some pictures of our spectacular boards, doors, and some of our littles reading in the library!

DEARathon readers

PreK littles in Cat in the Hat hats!

Library bulletin board

Fifth grade

Roald Dahl - Fourth grade

Laura Numeroff - Fourth grade

Fairy Tales - Fifth Grade

Fairy Tales - Fifth Grade

Patricia Polacco - 4th Grade

Fairy Tales - Fifth grade

 

 

Read Across America and WRAD14 "Read It Forward"

For World Read Aloud Day 2014, this is my week four post. I am very behind in my blog posting due to spring break and very busy with pet sitting, planning for digital citizenship lessons, and on and on and on!

Anyway, the final post for WRAD was to be a video of yourself reading aloud. Well, I am very self-conscience about being video-taped, but I did it. Then I accidentally ;0) deleted the video. So, here is a picture of me on WRAD 2014 reading aloud a book from one of my favorite series for young girlies, Silverlicious! I dressed as Pinkalicious that day at school and had a blast reading to many littles during the day. I chose to read Silverlicious because I knew that I was going to dress as Pinkalicious, the main character, that day.

I love to dress up, and so for every day we were in school that week (Sadly, only 3 days.), I dressed up as a book character! I've included pictures below of all of my fun costumes. 

Fly Guy!

 

Kids and adults alike love to try and figure out who I am dressing as when I decide to do it. I think it adds to the story as I am reading and it makes people laugh and be entertained. I did get some funny looks driving to and from work!



Miss Viola Swamp

The two days I didn't dress up, my costumes were to be of Harriet the Spy and Amelia Bedelia. I will just have to save them for another time! I hope you enjoy my pictures. If you like to dress up as book characters, please tell me about it in the comments below!
 

Teaching is Theater

“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.” –Gail Goodwin

I found this quote on the Two Writing Teachers blog page of quotes and it struck me that I've been a really good actor for many years! I've been acting teaching now for 24 years, and sometimes I think I deserve an Oscar!

How many times, on extremely difficult days, do we paste a smile on our faces for our kids? All of us do that more than we probably admit. I've known educators, school nurses, teacher assistants, cafeteria workers, custodians, secretaries, and administrators who have had to "buck up" and "man up" when they were diagnosed with a devastating medical condition or lost a family member. Did they give up or show up angry or mad? No! They continued to put on their happy face and dedicate themselves to their art - teaching and caring for kids. This kind of behavior deserves recognition. So, to all of you who show up, even when you're down, you deserve this: