Daily 5: Work on Writing & The Award!

Thanks so much for all of your kind feedback to my Teacher Time Bin! It's so exciting to hear from you how your's looks similar/different and all of the wonderful resources that are out there to jazz up Teacher Time :)

It has been a crazy week, but more on that excitement in a bit.

First, I wanted to share with you that we are delving into adding "Work on Writing" to our Daily 5 rotation and I couldn't be happier! I found with my current schedule that I wasn't able to keep the long Writer's Workshop time that I did last year and I was missing it. So were my kids, actually {I'm lucky to have a class full of kids who love to write! It's rare, but it's awesome!!}, so I knew something had to change.

We had a visiting author to our school today: Justin Matott.

Ohmagoodness, ah-ma-zing!! He is hilarious and totally engaging-- he spoke to a group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders for an hour and it felt too short. He had us all in stitches and left every kid inspired to write, revise {miracle man!}, and use writing as a way to be heard in the world..... sigh, he was honestly incredible. Check out his website HERE.

Inspired by this wonderful author, we launched Work on Writing and created our Anchor Chart (quickly, since they are pro's by now) and jumped in:

The 101 Writing Prompts that I mention come from Katie Jones and can be picked up from her TpT Store HERE. These prompts are awesome and the kids loved trying a few today!

I included Justin Matott's story starter on the bottom and the kids helped me remember it word-for-word as we were making the chart. He even stayed through lunch to hang out with kids and talk to them about their writing in the lunchroom. See?! Awesome :)

Ok, onto my celebration- last week was the ca-raziest week of my whole life. I had been nominated and was a finalist for our district's highest honor for an educator: The Impact on Education Award. It's so incredible to even be a finalist since it encompasses all teachers, staff, volunteers, administrators, anyone in the district who has a high impact in their work with kids. My teammate and mentor nominated me and I am still overwhelmed by that gesture!

My interview was Wednesday and let's just say that although it was the nicest interview committee ever, I was sososo nervous and I think I just rambled incoherently for 30 minutes straight :)

On Friday, during an assembly on safety drills, all of the sudden, our principal starts talking about how teachers make the difference and then two teachers bring in a HUGE banner with my name & "Congratulations" on it...... and, I started crying as our principal told the whole school I had been chosen as one of the winners :)

Turns out my super-nice interview committee was there, along with district admin, and even my husband and little girl (more tears). There was a camera crew, a gym-full of students, and all of my favorite friends (aka, the other teachers in my building)-- it was seriously the bestest day ever :) :)

I was even in the paper-- they called for me and I fainted, then pulled myself together to ramble incoherently to them for a few minutes :) A copy of the article is HERE.

It was the single greatest surprise and honor of my teacher life-- I think I am still recovering and the celebratory dinner is still a month and a half away.

So, that's been my week and I am still just stunned. I wanted to tell you all of this to also say THANK YOU-- because if it weren't for blogging, following your blogs, and being inspired by you day in and day out, I never would have been challenged to raise the level of my teaching and this award would not have been possible. So, thank you for being a part of such an amazing experience :) :)

Have a wonderful week, my friends!