Fall Fest & Playground


Last Friday our PTO sponsored and ran the annual Fall Festival – lots of work on the part of our great PTO.  The festival is an opportunity for our kids and their parents to come to school and experience school in a fun environment.  Irving is a community school – it sits in a neighborhood – a neighborhood of houses and apartments with families and, of course, kids. Last Friday with the coming together of neighborhood families, I was reminded of what Irving Elementary means for so many of our residents -our school gives families a sense of place and belonging.  Irving is a cherished landmark, and with the recent closing of so many Chicago schools, we know how fortunate we are to have our neighborhood school; Irving keeps the neighborhood healthy and alive.

And, a special shout out to Elizabeth, Tyler, Michelle, Alex, Sydney, Trish, Jess, Rebecca, Kelly, Shauna, and Julie.  You were not required to attend, but you did!  Your presence told all that our students are taught by teachers who care deeply about all aspects of their student lives. The kids and parents loved having you there. Without a doubt, you deepened your connection to your students and to all of us.  Thank you for the gift of your priceless weekend time and your participation!

Wednesday’s official playground opening ceremony further cements the importance of a neighborhood school –the new playground says that we not only learn together we play together.   Our commemoration of Caleb and Nancy remind us of that we are a community who celebrates and grieves together – a school community who joins hands and hearts and laughs and cries with one another.  We all belong to such a community!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slice of life

Good evening  I am curious about your own writing.  Do any of you have a writing practice, such as, journaling?  Just wondering.  If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it that many of you do have a writing habit of sorts – if not now, perhaps earlier in life.  Please consider sharing a posting with us – or even on the bigger stage of Two Writing Teachers Blog. Last week I talked about the blog – Two Writing Teachers. This blog offers us the opportunity to share a piece of our own writing on pretty much any subject. You will find the means to do that under “Slice of Life” .  Just wanted to throw this out to anyone so inclined.  I’m going to push myself to post something.  Courage, right?    At any rate, my thoughts on writing focused on Heart Maps or Close to the Bone maps.  It seems to me that such a map would be beneficial for different writing responses, and most especially when we require students to write t...
Read more

Valentines Day

Carpe diem!  Happy Valentine’s Day!   Kids – and boyfriends and girlfriends– and adults who have special relationships with kids - that would be grandparents, for sure, want to show some expression of their love.   We send our cards with hearts and Xs and Os – and many of us spend a few minutes reading the sentiment inside the card – the thought needs to be a good fit.  Why not take the time to compose our own message to our Valentine?   I have been reading a fair amount about using mentor texts to teach the craft of writing.  Lucy Calkins and Katie Woodray (Wondrous Words) continually advise us to really get to know several good books – like inside and out.  What are the “tricks” of their writing?   What are the craft elements the author weaves into the writing? Writing gurus are reminding us to stop when we are reading a well written passage - “Hey look at that.  Look at how she wrote that!”  Try to fig...
Read more

Mother's day

Here’s an idea -  Mother’s Day comes in this final month and all of us can conjure up how our students might write a message to probably the most important audience in their live – their Mom. I think most kids can hang their writing hats on the following idea. The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown could be used as a mentor text to show students how authors like Brown developed a message and to create a written Mother’s Day message for their own mothers.   Brown selects several mundane important things/events and builds the case for why each is important.  She opens giving a strong reason explaining why the thing/event is important. She continues building a case for its importance with several other reasons.  And she ends each description with the same sentence as the first.    Listen to the oral reading , and you will see and hear the effectiveness of the message that is set in a poetic rhythm. I have given you a verse using Margaret Wise Brown...
Read more