Celebrate: Changing the Last Day of School

It's early Saturday morning, and I wanted to post a few small celebrations from the week. Thanks to Ruth Ayres for her weekly link-up, Celebrate This Week. Check out all the blogs that are linked up HERE.

Monday was our last day of school.  Our principal asked all the classes to not show a movie the last day of school and gave us plenty of time to consider a new option. She encouraged us to choose an activity that would support community and conversations.  I have to admit I always showed Akeelah and the Bee the last day of school and loved that activity because it has so many great lessons that we always discussed, but I had to change my plans.  

We would end the year the way we started the year.  With our famous Room 228 quote: "We are ____ ." Students could choose to fill in the blank with the following: historians, scientists, readers, writers, word smiths, and mathematicians. After brainstorming and filling up our entire dry erase board with favorite activities students broke into smaller groups to work on their anchor posters which I will use next year for the first few weeks of school as a preview. 

Creating "We are scientists" 

Finally this celebration which will be placed in my special memory box of my favorite moments of teaching.

May OLW Reflection: Lessons Learned from Balloons

Today is our last day of school! Last week, I read an idea on twitter that I decided to try for the first time to close our school year. I asked my class to write down one thing they would like to do before they leave our school to go to middle school.  I collected all the little pieces of paper divided them into groups and put them in the seven balloons above.  Every day and even today, we will pop a balloon and celebrate the event in it.  Our schedule is on the board each day, and the blue balloon shows the time of day we celebrated by popping our class balloon. This helped with the inevitable question, "Where are we going to pop the balloon?" 


Last week, we popped the balloon and inside were the three sheets that told us to go play soccer as a class.  First, I have never played soccer, and my own children did not play soccer, but I still played and I am really bad. I cheated I guess: I touched the ball with my hands, I accidentally pushed someone to save me from getting kicked in the shin, and finally I screamed really loud when I went to kick the ball to scare the student. I guess I wasn't being very mature but my class LOVED me playing with them. Finally we had a wonderful moment when one student who never plays sports had to play, but the amazing thing is 2-3 friends helped him learn to play and as a class everyone came together to help him score his first goal ever in eleven years!!  I never saw that coming when the first balloon popped.

After we completed the activity, I shared our new read aloud:  Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.  I found this book with my friend, Mary Lee, on our  Blogger's visit to Cover to Cover.  I was excited just by the cover and then to learn about the story of how the balloons are made for the Macy's Day Parade it was so much fun. But the hook for me purchasing the book came when Mary Lee showed my how to use use the QR code in the back of the book.  Very cool!!! In addition, I shared Wonder #603 with my class this week, Do you Love a Parade?


Other blogging friends are posting their OLW end of the month reflection. Thanks for cross posting with me.  Enjoy reading Tracy's post about listening @ A Teaching Life.

This morning I found Ruth's post @ Two Writing Teachers about her reflection on the end of the school year. Tara @ A Teaching Life posted her May reflections also. Happy summer to those who are finished and for those who haven't the finish line is right around the corner.