Celebrate This Week 5/21

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It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.

I can’t believe how incredibly busy my life got so quickly. I had a lot of bright spots in the last few weeks, but didn’t make the time to do my Saturday posts because my weekends have been crazy! And, how is it May 21st already?!?!

Lately, I have been reflecting about the school year a lot. I still have a few weeks of school left, but we are definitely in that final crunch of the year. The past month flew by on a cloud of testing, testing, and more testing for my fourth grade kiddos. The state testing window overlaps with our third Star testing window for our district so we go straight into more testing when we finish with the State test. Our routines are so thrown off by all of this. So, today I am celebrating the fact that, for the most part, we are finished with testing.

I am also celebrating the group of students I have in this class. The end of the school year is looming and I am not exactly ready to send these kiddos on. This is a rambunctious, energetic, kind, and ready-to-learn group of students. We have a wonderful community and I love going to school every day because I love the place that we have created together. So, today I am celebrating community and creating an environment for learning.

This week, we had volunteers come in from Joy Global to do the Junior Achievement curriculum with our students. This is always a really nice day. The students enjoy the games and activities in the Junior Achievement curriculum and the volunteers have a fun day and get a chance to experience what teachers do all day every day. The volunteers that came into my classroom were awesome and my students had an excellent experience.

Last, but certainly not least, I am celebrating the power of story. This group of students loves read aloud time. We have read so many great books this year. We have cried together, had belly laughs together, and just loved characters and stories together. So, a couple weeks ago, I decided that I needed to share Harry Potter with this group. I introduced the book by telling the kids that this is one of my all-time favorites and that even if they saw the movies they really didn’t experience it yet. We are about halfway through and our read aloud time is magic. They are loving the book, as I knew they would. What is great is that there are some kids who have not seen the movies. The audible reactions to things that are happening is priceless. The protests when I stop reading tell me that this was the right choice of books to share for our last few weeks.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

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Author: Andrea

I am an instructional technology coach in a middle school in Milwaukee, WI. I have been teaching for over 20 years in many grade levels ranging from first through eighth grade. I am a lifelong book nerd.

5 thoughts on “Celebrate This Week 5/21”

  1. What a contrast – testing and read aloud. I am glad the testing is over and more time for reading available.

  2. Sorry that so much time is taken by the testing, but you’re making up for that with Harry Potter. It’s awesome that they are loving it for the first time. Nice end-of-year gift, Andrea.

  3. I love your celebrations and am so happy you collected them. I, too, am always up for a celebration of the power of story!
    Cheers,
    Ruth

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