 Team Awesome should be coming home tired today. We not only tromped back and forth to the river twice but we also had our regular playtime and some activities on the beach. We were lucky in terms of weather as it just barely began to sprinkle as we were making our way back at the end of the day. The presenters were interesting and all the children were well-dressed so there were no complaints of being bored or cold. We played hard and learned hard. It was an awesome day at the river!
 Most Fridays three Team Awesome members will bring home a Buddy Bag consisting of a stuffie, two related books and a response journal. Why Buddy Bags? As recreational reading is decreasing as a chosen activity for young children, pleasurable family reading experiences can contribute significantly to students' literacy motivation and skills and home literacy activities may counteract the feeling in some young students that reading is "something I do in school". Buddy Bags are a great motivating and authentic homework activity which includes a creative thinking experience.
Rasinski (2012) suggests three of the essentials for developing reading fluency are reading real literature, getting real-time word recognition support, and participating in assisted reading activities. These are included in Buddy Bags as families are encouraged to participate in the reading and response journal writing on whatever level they are able. Paired reading allows children to share books they have experienced at school, to lead literacy activities familiar to them (similar to those done in class), and thus to take a comfortable leadership role in the family activity. As they interact with their family members, children can experience first hand how parents or older siblings may grapple with text complexity and make connections among themes, characters, unknown vocabulary words, or story concepts. But the most important purpose of the Buddy Bags is to engage families in pleasurable literacy activities in a relaxed, comfortable environment. Buddy Bags provide outstanding learning and social opportunities. This is a win-win-win project: parents learn about their children, children learn about their families, and literacy skills taught in school are reinforced at home in authentic ways. Children experience a sense of ownership and involvement as they share their own response page in show-and-tell manner soon after they bring the bag back. This provides them the spotlight, expanding their social and oral skills while sharing information about their families. Their excitement often inspires their classmates and they can hardly wait until it is their turn to take another Buddy Bag home. Tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 14 is River's Day at BEST and all classes will be making their way down to the river to rotate through a number of presentations/ stations by local organizations. I am excited to participate as all of our Rivers Days have been wonderful learning experiences for everyone. Extra supervision will be welcome.
For your information:
10:00 Welcome & Opening remarks 10:30 - 11:00 Station #1 Aboriginal Fishing Technology K-6 11:05 - 11:35 Station #2 Junior Ranger Program K-6 11:35 - 11:50 Classes return to BEST 11:50 - 12:05 Eating time at BEST 12:05 - 12:40 Students outside (playground) at BEST 12:40 - 12:55 Classes return to river 12:55 - 1:25 Station #3 River Art K-6 1:30 - 2:00 Station #4 Cool First Peoples Stuff K-3 2:00 Classes return to school for wrap-up and dismissal at 2:30 It's going to be so much fun! As you know, we have a 12:30 dismissal on Tuesday, Oct. 18 and Wednesday, Oct. 19 due to parent/teacher interviews. We will have been in school for six weeks and I met with you all before school started. I also see many of you once or twice a day. We have mainly been working on routines and social responsibility and getting settled in since the beginning of September. The children have been great and at this time I have no serious concerns. If that changes I will certainly contact you and set up a meeting.
If you would like to meet with me privately next week I would be happy to see you. Just return the interview schedule sent home to the office to request a time and confirm with me sometime before Tuesday. Otherwise, I propose that we have a bit of an 'Open House' on Tuesday and Wednesday. When you pick your child up at 12:30 have them show you around our classroom and explain some of the things that are up on the walls and some of our routines. They will be thrilled to play tour guide and excited to have you at school. If you have any specific questions for me about your child at that time, please feel free to ask. I look forward to seeing you!  The concept of thankfulness can be difficult for adults to embrace, and even harder for children who believe the world revolves around them. While some people may be blessed with a natural inclination toward thankfulness, for most of us gratitude is learned. By learning gratitude, children become sensitive to the feelings of others, developing their innate capacities for empathy and altruism, whereas entitled kids end up feeling perpetually disappointed. I have struggled with how I can help instill gratitude in children who are naturally self-centered and growing up in an entitlement-driven society. Gratitude isn’t just a lesson to be taught to children, but also an ongoing exercise in learning for adults. I work daily on being grateful for what I have right now and that includes mundane things that we often take for granted such as clean water and fresh air. And when interacting with Team Awesome I try to share frequently and generously and say please and thank you so that good manners are “what we do” not just what we say we do and encourage them to do the same. Thanks giving is something I'm hoping to teach Team Awesome to do every day rather than just on a Monday holiday.
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