Monday and Tuesday of this week were my last days of Book Fair so that I could get all the classes in. I have to tell you, after a full week of it last week, I was kind of over it but those kids needed to get the same treatment everyone else did so I mustered it up. Tuesday I didn't wear my referee costume because my daughter won an art award and had a ceremony that morning so I needed to be dressed like a grown-up. I didn't think the kids would care or notice but they did. Every single group that came through that day said something about it. It just goes to show you that a costume can go a long way and have more of an impact than you'd think.
Wednesday we packed up the Book Fair, did the final reports and found out that it was the highest grossing Book Fair in school history. I was thrilled! Especially since I recently cleaned out my account for the Kwame visit. I also had a really interesting phone conference with two people at Follett who wanted to talk to me about what I've used Collections with and what I plan on using it with. We ended up talking about all kinds of cool stuff and they gave me some great ideas! They seemed interested in doing some work with me. I hope that comes to fruition because they were super awesome. If nothing else, I got some awesome ideas to use with our staff. I also got to spend the afternoon with the always amazing Sherri Smith-Dodgson, my Follett rep, and my absolutely fantastic District Media Resource person, Trish Ely. We worked on our presentation for the upcoming FAME conference that's in November. I'm really excited about it!
Thursday was my favorite day. I got to have Rae Burch's Science classes in the Media Center. They did a self-paced Nearpod lesson and then when they finished, they were tasked with building various Elements using some of our building materials for Maker Space. I put out our Magnatiles, Lego Architecture, Keva Blocks, Brain Flakes, Strawbees, and pipe cleaners and pony beads. Rae made instructions and cards with the elements on them. The kids had to have the proper number of protons, neutrons, and electrons for each Element they built. I pulled some books that might help them should they need some support and helped them build. We had some great stuff built! One group did such a great job with a challenge I gave them with Strawbees. I kept their project and put it up on display in front of the Media Center. It was AWESOME!
Thursday we also had our first ever Title 1 Night and we had Fine Arts night. I got to help with the Family Night and then our Fine Arts department is always so gracious and allows me some time to speak to all the parents about our 20 Book Challenge, why it is important, and how they can support their students. The tech failed for my slideshow with all the pretty graphs but I spoke from my heart and I hope it was impactful.
Friday was another fun day! The Friday before Halloween every year our teachers dress up in costumes and the kids can vote on their favorite costumes by placing spare change in the buckets for those teachers. The money raised helps buy Thanksgiving meals for families in need. There were some incredible costumes. My friend Lara dressed as Mary Poppins and it was so perfect! She even pulled a lamp out of her bag during our faculty meeting. Fine Arts killed it! They were stick people. I dressed up as Library Lady: fighting book resistance one student at a time...lol.
Lara's classes were with me Friday and they've been working on a unit on persistence so we read For Everyone by Jason Reynolds and then they checked out books and read. We had a Project Lit meeting the last mod of the day and discussed The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora and First Rule of Punk. Those kiddos are going with Lara's ESOL class next week to see Pablo at Hoover Middle School. I'm so excited for them!
It was a busy week. I keep waiting for one that's slow and "normal" where I can catch my breath but I'm starting to wonder if that's ever going to happen. It's exhausting to keep up this fast pace but these kids are so excited and so are the teachers. It's hard to make the decision to crush the momentum to give myself some time to breathe. I guess I"ll rest up when Thanksgiving break gets here.
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