Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
With the selection of my OLW, Presence, I thought about my classroom(s) and how I could be more present there. At the beginning of the school year, I wanted to make reading aloud an every day occurrence. It is a challenge with my teaching situation because I have students in different grades rotating in and out. With my morning group, I realized that most days we were all there at 10:30 AM, and they leave between 10:50 and 11:00, so Read Aloud became constant on the schedule.
This week we finished Fish in a Treeby Lynda Mullaly Hunt, the middle-grade Global Read Aloud choice. Being so closely involved with a book, so intimate, my voice cracked through the whole last chapter. I think I cried not only because Ally had triumphed, but also because I was looking out at the wide eyes of my students and feeling their love for Ally, too. When we finished, before I knew it, Emily had written a quote and taped it to the wall, “Nothing is Impossible. The very word says, I’m Possible!”
I have had more trouble getting a time to read aloud with my afternoon group, so this week I made it a priority. All work stopped at 2:40 and we read until 3:00. I started Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate. I loved it when Noah said, “Mrs. Simon, can we watch Crenshaw?” Isn’t that what read aloud is all about? Watching a book together.
Today, I celebrate special moments with my students to be truly present.