Vacation, Goodbyes, and a "Thanks" to Jeff Kinney

Good Morning!

     The crazy reason why I am up at 8am this morning is unknown.  But what makes matters more interesting is that I began break yesterday at officially 3pm.   For everyone not in the Northeast, I'm not sure if you get what we have known as "Winter Break."  I'm sorry!  I wish everyone could feel the relief that I feel for getting ahead for a change.  Even though the parking lot cleared out at 3:01pm, I stayed until 5pm.  Does anyone else feel odd when that happens?  Anyway, I stayed and got a bunch done.  Well, by that I mean book projects graded and displayed, wiped the desks down, and tidied up.  I also have my lesson practically planned for Monday in both ELA and Science so that I can actually hopefully not take work to.........FLORIDA! :-)  My plane leaves tomorrow from Newark, NJ.  Odd timing considering Whitney Houston is from there and therefore it may be kind of crazy this weekend.  But who knows, maybe we will be in the airport with a celebrity. Tim Tebow? LOL

    In other news, one of my girls is leaving the school.  Her last day was yesterday.  My school is rural and small.  The kids know each other for forever, and it's not a transient population.  So as you may be able to assume, it made for a really hard day yesterday.  On the outside this should look like a blessing for my classroom as she refuses to do work, is disorganized, and it takes incredible push to get her on track.  But I felt MISERABLE yesterday.  I don't want her to leave.  So Thursday as I gathered her items together and put together a little present of school supplies (she never is prepared for what she needs for class), I flipped through her journal.  That day, she just presented a project on "Don't You Dare Read This Mrs. Dunphrey" by Haddix that she finished ON TIME!  She related all the characters to someone in her life.  I almost started crying when I see she added this:

I don't know why it's upside down but I can't seem to get it right.  Anyway, that's me starring in her "movie poster" project.  She loved this book.  I gave it to her to read because she has a tough life and I thought she would relate to it.  I was right.  She was late to homeroom a couple of weeks ago and I was ready to begin to yell when I look in the hallway and she has her nose in the book, walking as slowly as possible to my room so she can keep reading.  *happy sigh*  So when I was afterschool Thursday I flipped to a page she had from September where I had students tell me what they liked, and didn't like about both reading and writing.  Here is what I saw:

I'd like to think that, even for just this one book, this changed for her.

Speaking of reluctant readers, I would like to issue a giant "THANK YOU" to Jeff Kinney and the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series & for the latest book:

Photo from Amazon.com

THREE of my 22 read this for their independent book.  I loved one of the projects made by a boy who is a lower reader and also defiantly does not love reading...(yet.)

It was just too cute.  Speaking of readers...I teach 6th grade and I have one boy who is, self-admittedly, lazy.  He just doesn't like the work that school includes, but is SO bright!  Anyway, I had this book below from Scholastic that I received free for ordering books.  I hadn't read it yet.  This student sees it, reads the back, and wants to borrow it.  He LOVED it.  So much so that my kids reported that "(student name) is being weird.  He sat in the cafeteria and just read that book.  He wouldn't even talk to anyone."  So, since he just finished reading it I haven't yet but I am just throwing it out there that it was well-liked by one of my kiddos! Happy Saturday

Photo from Amazon.com