Monday mornings always begin with our broadcast announcements. Fifth grade student readers, as seen below, deliver the news to know for the day and week ahead, including Project Wisdom lessons. Scripts are prepared ahead of time by our technology teacher and parent volunteers with student and teacher input, so most Mondays we have pretty smooth sailing. This AM announcement time also gives us an opportunity for special skits, guest speakers, and more. We’d love to be able to grow the program where we have a dedicated anchor set on campus and more student written pieces, so the sky's the limit to the program. Thanks awesome Scottie Parents for keeping KHPS alive and well each week.
To say that Coach DeLine was more than pleasantly surprised on Monday would be an understatement. Three lovely representatives from UT’s College of Elementary Education presented Coach with a congratulatory letter notifying his selection as one of the 2012 Zarrow Outstanding Texas Teacher Award winners. I understand from the presenters Elexa Antweil, Bess Wirht, and Rachel Herold that our very own PE teacher was the only kinesiology department winner in the surrounding Austin area; the acceptance letter states that Coach was “nominated by University field-placement supervisors, and winners were selected by a committee of students in Teachers of Tomorrow”. He will be feted on Monday, February 20 at UT’s Activity Center ballroom and we couldn’t be prouder. Way to go Coach!
Our annual Book Fair has begun! Though there are many terrific activities for kids of all ages through the week-long event, the Dad’s Breakfast is one of the favorites around here. Today, the fair opened before school with students and dads arriving on campus, partaking of breakfast, conversation, and book buying galore It’s one more opportunity for our school to connect with parents and we love that so many dads have embraced the event and show up to spend some morning time with their sons and daughters. Thanks Dads and breakfast organizers - one more meaningful way to connect over books.
Ms. Guimbarda, our wonderful fifth grade language arts teacher, always does her best to keep students motivated, interested, and engaged in high quality assignments. Her students have recently been reading the Lois Lowry novel Number the Stars along with creating time capsules and analyzing poetry/other relevant text connected to the Holocaust time period. One very meaningful addition to the unit this year is Ms. Guimbarda’s inclusion of The Butterfly Project into the unit. Per the project's website, “1,500,000 innocent children perished in the Holocaust. In an effort to remember them, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The butterflies will eventually comprise a breath-taking exhibition, currently scheduled for Spring 2014, for all to remember." Beth McDaniel of the Jewish Community Relations Council further states that the butterflies will be part of a "spectacular exhibit at the city-wide Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 19th) and also at the exhibit at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden the month of April" before reaching their final destination in Houston. We are glad our children's artwork will be a part of these remembrances.
For this project, each fifth grader was given a short, age-appropriate biography of a child who died during the Holocaust. From that biography, students created colorful butterflies they felt best represented their assigned child, as well as a 6 word memoir written on the back of the artwork, both of which they presented in an Honoring Ceremony today. The very act of summing up, in only 6 words, something so unimaginable for most of our children may seem impossible. But they did. And they did so beautifully and respectfully. Sometimes a few words are all that is needed. On the back of Will's, simply written, was the following memoir -
You deserve more than 6 words.
Thank you Ms. Guimbarda, Will, and our fifth grade students for reminding us that words not only have the power to help us remember, but also can inspire the future good in us all.
