Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
photo by Margaret Gibson Simon enhanced on Picmonkey
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.
