Wednesday, February 24, 2010

When You Encourage Your Students...


You can sometimes end up with a pie in your face! We recently completed the Jazz Read-a-thon at our school and I was completely surprised that my class won for total minutes read (bragging point: the top 4 readers in 6th grade were all from class)! Of course because the students sacrificed SO much to read an average of 1200 minutes in 4 weeks, I had to pay my dues for torturing them and take a pie to the face. It was generic whip cream that tasted good, but I smelled like rotten milk for the rest of the day.

I've never been at a school where we've won the Jazz Read-a-thon and I was ecstatic to find out that what our prize was. Our little school won a visit from Ronnie Price! He was the nicest kid ever and was really interactive with the students. He read the book I Can Be Anything! by Jerry Spinelli (which by the way is a great book). Then the fun stuff happened...

Ronnie (because we're on a first name basis now) cleared the area and challenged the top readers in the school to a one on one game. If they made it and he didn't, they won. If both of them didn't make it, the student won. And of course if he made it, he won. Ronnie didn't beat a single student...go figure! He then, after being persuaded, ran across the gym and did a slam dunk.

After Ronnie left, it was time for the pies. Like I said earlier, all of the top readers from 6th were in my class, so it really worked out with me taking one for the team. I'm just glad that my kind, gentle, and sensitive girl got picked to pie me instead of my 5' 6" monster of a student who isn't too happy with me now that parent-teacher conferences are over. All in all, a good experience. I'm just glad to have programs like this that help students work for a goal and get in a ton of reading practice.

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