Monday Morning Musings: A little motivation for May

Principal ponderings...
Even though last week was teacher appreciation day, hopefully you all know that you are appreciated just as much on all the other days! Here are some motivational images and video clips to inspire you this week:
This is a short video of teachers reading letters they wrote to themselves on the first day of school.

I think I posted this before, but it's worth watching again!

There is a really great website called www.teach.org and it has lots of videos to inspire you. Here is one that shows parents and teachers talking about how important special education teachers are to students.

Now...who is ready to have an amazing week?!

Currently reading:
I pulled out some picture books from my shelves at home to reread. The first one is a beautiful poetry book called dear world by Takayo Noda.

All of the poems in the book are written in the form of a child's letter to the earth. And each poem is accompanied by these amazing cut-paper collages. It's a great book to do a poetry writing activity that is in letter form, and then you can combine it with an art activity to pair with it. Here is the first poem in the book:

dear world

please tell me
why and how
you grow
delicious berries
and fruit in the trees

please tell me
why and how
you give
sweet smells
to the flowers

please tell me
why and how
you change
the colors of leaves
in the fall

please tell me
why and how
you keep our earth
so beautiful

please tell me

Another book I read is a wonderful non fiction book called Panda Kindergarten. Those of you who know my obsession with panda bears know that I have a lot of panda books that I have acquired over the years!

I also read Falling for Rapunzel. Love how this fractured fairy tale starts: "Once upon a bad hair day, a prince rode up Rapunzel's way." This is a book that will have kids laughing out loud when they hear about Rapunzel not hearing the prince correctly and instead of throwing down her hair, she throws down everything from underwear to dirty socks to pancake batter!

Events this week:
Monday - Flyers and pledge sheets will go home today about our walk-a-thon to raise money for the Blood Farm Fund
Tuesday - Spring pictures!
Wednesday - 4th grade math MCAS, Grade 3 chorus practice @ 2:25, School Council Meeting @3:30
Thursday - 4th grade math MCAS, Grade 3 Plimoth Plantation field trip, PTA meeting @7:30
Friday - Supply budget info due to Carol

Great things I noticed last week:

The 4th grade was treated to an awesome assembly: Mad About Math! It's so great to see someone celebrating how amazing math is, and it's even better to see kids get so excited about math!
Our school-wide jump rope assembly was fabulous! The energy in the room during the morning assembly was electric! Even I got to get in some jumping action. But in the afternoon, Mr. Crowley was the lucky one who got called up on stage. I loved Peter's message that we can all become champions as long as we practice hard. On Friday, it was great to see several of the 3rd graders practicing their jump rope skills on the playground.
Some of us have been taking Laura Taylor's class that focuses on the book Comprehension from the Ground Up. Here is a great visual that Laura has been trying out with her kindergarteners. Her students have been very good about deciding how they are doing with their reading stamina. Are you a superhero when it comes to reading stamina? ;)
4th graders in Mrs. Clark's class were using similes, metaphors and alliteration, oh my! Using the chromebooks, they were creating poems for their mothers.
Mrs. Potter's 4th graders were putting some muscle into their poetry project. They were creating aged-looking holders for their poetry books using wax, paper folding, and an iron.