ways you can read, the musical

Every Friday the whole school meets on the yard for assembly. There are weekly traditions (a welcome song, birthday wishes, announcements) including a performance put on by a different class each week. Today was the first grade class's turn to perform.

Assembly somewhat fell into my lap...it was clear that me taking over the planning was something welcomed by my head teachers. So I ran with it.

Theme: Different ways a person can read.

In our class, we stress the idea that you don't have to be reading Harry Potter to be considered a reader. So why not really drive that message home.

The gist: I split the class into groups that represented different types of reading: Words, Pictures, Faces, Music, Stars, Braille (the list went on an on...it was hard limiting them). And each had a different visual representation. The one that went over the best, I think, was when the four students got on stage with four pieces of construction paper and, when put together, formed a picture of a fish. Ta da!

I had trouble sleeping the last two days because, why lie, I was nervous. Though I knew it wasn't a big deal in the long run, the fact that this was the first thing I would really call my own made the event seem more monumental than it needed to be.

AMAZING! The class rocked that assembly and really wowed the audience. Hearing the audience "ah ha!" during the fish puzzle really made it clear to me that we had the audience eating out of their little 6-year old palms.

Afterwards, parents came up gushing about their superstar baby actors (as they should have) and congratulating us on a job well done. But what really meant a lot to me was hearing the response from the teachers.

While I don't know him very well, there is a teacher in the middle school who left me speechless. He is a no-nonsense type of guy whose opinion I've come to value. He doesn't just hand out compliments like Halloween candy. So it was my time to gush when he came up to me and said (paraphrasing), "That was possibly the best assembly I've seen. Not only was the content meaningful, the presentation was just as thoughtful. This type of presentation is something I might have expected from the 4th or 5th graders."

These students are sharp and wonderful and have proven they can live up to high expectations.

Yippee!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND