The Voices

Snow Day today.  I'm not sure why I needed one so soon after winter break, but I was pretty thrilled to hear that school was cancelled today due to a "wintry mix." I so appreciate the easy re-entry into the 2018 portion of our school year.

The Thirdlanders got right back into gear.  I was happy to see all of them.  At morning meeting, I jotted down some of their "relevant topics."  We have different ideas sometimes about the meaning of relevant, but morning meeting continues to be a great way to start our day.  Some of the comments shared this week included:

• We have 3 bats in our chimney.
• I got a pretty bad rug burn yesterday.
• I brought a pamphlet in about the Fishes of Texas.  You can borrow it if you want to learn more about the Fishes of Texas.
• A bird got into my house and it broke a lot of our glass stuff.  
• I got a really cool haircut that I really like. 
• I read a book called Molly's Story.  It's sad, but good.

I met with the Indian School literature circle on Wednesday.  They had read their chapter and finished their post its before winter break, so we took the first few minutes to browse the chapter and read over our post its.  I added a VOICE post it this time, where the Thirdlanders write down an idea in the voice of one of the characters.  I suggested that we improvise and conduct our literature circle by adopting the roles of the characters as we chat.  The Thirdlanders are natural actors and so they cheerfully hopped on board with this idea. Aunt Emma was portrayed fairly harshly as you can imagine if you're familiar with the book, but even as they used her bossy tone, they included reasons for her actions. "I care about you, but you need to learn to do things the right way!" It was fun to see the Thirdlanders smiling as they acted out these impromptu character conversations.

We always write a paragraph after literature circle, reflecting on the chapters we've read and our connections to them. I extended the assignment by having them write their paragraphs "in role."  Looking forward to reading those next week.

This weekend is going to be NCTE proposal weekend.  I've put it off long enough.  I always get keyed up when I have to write a conference proposal, so I'm hoping I can lighten up and aim for the wu wei ideal of effortless action.