Winning

I am not going to lie, I was dreading this week at school. My class is tough to engage and they are done. I feel like my bag of tricks has been turned over and the last crumbs have been licked clean. This morning I walked in with a complete sense of aversion to trying to engage them in the same formulaic language arts curriculum that I have been trying to engage them in all year. Read a story. Work on vocabulary. Cite text evidence. I decided to do something different. I went into the resource room and looked for a chapter book had that enough copies for all my students, was fifth grade appropriate and could be read in a school day with some hustle. Frindle by Andrew Clement looked like it met my requirements, but I had never read it. I looked over the first chapter, and decided it would work. I told my class we were going to read a book in a day.

My class moaned and groaned, but when I stopped after the first chapter and gave them a challenge that tied in with the chapter and set the timer for eight minutes, they were all in. I came up with activities as we read, probably not perfect planning, but on the fly worked for this. The day sped by and we finished the book at 2:30, half an hour before the end of day.

After the students left for the end of the day, I met with my principal for my end of the year meeting. My students actually had more than expected growth in math and reading. Shock of all shocks. I feel good about it, but also feel like I have worked my butt off to get here.

Tomorrow night we will celebrate our fifth grade graduation. I don’t know what life has in store for these kids. I would love to get a graduation announcement from all of them when they reach high school. I would come watch them play ball or cheer for their first jobs. Probably though, I will never see some of them again. But no matter what, I will never forget these kids. Some days have felt like a battle, but today I tasted a bit of victory.