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me: hey look at this huge pile of work I need to get done...I better get on that

also me: or...even better idea...we can pinterest what we want our classroom theme to be next year

#my brain ia the worst #education #educhums #edchum #edchums #educachums #pinterest

Not super excited to go back after winter break, but I am excited to see my kids again.

I'm stoked to tell them about our Donor's Choose project that got funded! Gonna have to clear off my bookshelf for the $400 worth of books coming our way.

#donors choose #edchum #literacy #classroom #classroom library

Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card!

We’ve just finished up my favourite theme of the year: Literacy! I was taught at an early age that you’ve always got a friend when you’ve got a book, and it’s a lesson I try really hard to impart on all my students throughout the year. This year was the first year I have had the opportunity to teach this theme to a high-level class, so I decided to really push the boat out and after spending a few days going over the basic elements of a story, types of genre and how to do a 5 finger retell of a story, we had a go at writing our own stories!

First, we planned our main characters and setting. I had to write these all down and put it up on our bulletin board to a) stop students changing their mind about their story elements every other hour b) make sure that everyone was doing something different so that I wouldn’t be stuck marking 11 stories about unicorns.

Then we planned the main events for the story (every story had to have a problem and a solution of course!)

Then we went ahead with drafting and writing our stories! It was a lot of hard work, but I guess I must have made the task sound exciting enough because the kids absolutely threw themselves into the challenge and even my worst writers were able to produce over 2 pages of A4 writing. We also had a fun time creating our front covers for our stories. Featured are my two favorite stories: The Adventures of Stickman (who got into some trouble with a gardener digging up his home!) and The Secret Kimchi Planet (Kimchi Superman lives on a secret planet made of kimchi and makes a girl scientist fall in love with him via kimchi!)

After all that hard work we celebrated with an Icelandic style jólabókaflóð party. We made the classroom really cozy with fairy lights, blankets and pillows. Then everyone snuggled down with some cookies and a “reading buddy” (any stuffed toy from home) and shared their favorite books. It was lovely to overhear even my most reluctant readers have animated discussions about why certain genres and characters were better than others and discovering new books to try! We also took home these fab bookmarks I made with the help of a printer, some ribbon and a laminator to celebrate how we are all expert readers!