Sunday, January 31, 2010

Literacy Week

We ended our literacy week celebration at school this week with two contests.  Students were invited to create a poster of their favorite book or scene from a book.  One of my ESOL students took an entire week to create her poster.  She won a $25 gift certificate.  I am so pleased.  It was her first English novel and one I gave her at the end of school last year.  She has been working on reading it since May of 2009.  Her father refuses to let her read books in Vietnamese because he wants her to learn the English quicker.  After 8 months of struggling with the language I heard her giggling in class during silent reading time.  She was beginning to understand the book. She told me the character was crazy and shared the page with her neighbor.  It was so worth it to see this young girl try so hard and then win an award.  The second great thing was a door decorating contest.  I kept checking with the media specialist about the teachers participating and was told out of 40 some teachers only three of us were doing anything for it.  I was so disappointed.  One of them was the art teacher and the other was the 6th grade language arts teacher.  She used three doors to illustrate a scene from Dar and the Spear Thrower. 
I couldn't decide on a book and the media specialist told me I could do a collage and that got me to thinking.  I had my students create "doors".  The outside of each door was decorated with glitter or fabric designs we ironed on. I covered the outside of my door with black paper, used double sided tape to adhear the different shaped doors, added pics of books under the doors and the title of the book "100 Cupboards" by N.D. Wilson.  In this way I was able to celebrate many of my favorite books and yet do it while featuring one I had just completed and loved.  My goal was to at least beat out the art teacher.  My students told me the LA teacher would win.  I was shocked to hear my name announced at the end of the day.  I didn't get a picture.  I am hoping it will still be up on Monday when we return.  If so I will take a pic and post it.  Our doors are outside in semi enclosed hallways.  I am not afraid of rain but wind.  So let's hope it stayed up.  My students worked hard on it.

3 comments:

  1. That is so AWESOME! Are you talking about Tu? (not sure if that is how you spell it) You're such a great influence on your kids, don't let the administration get you down. Oh, and I've started writing a bit again. ;)

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