Still in high gear!

The Dragon from The Paperbag Princess

I had a fantastic start to my week.  Happy to say I spent Monday with a group of HP teachers, as we participated in Round II of full day DBI training.  Held at UT, Sarah Coleman and Lara Dossett led this second K-5/special ed teacher cadre through a similar activity that our first group went through earlier in the semester; our goal is for all teachers, including special areas, to have their own professional development day, seeing an entire 1-5 day lesson arc, centered around the TEKS in content areas that have the most meaning for them.  For example, the two days completed so far have been based on language arts objectives and our math and science folks on campus, though they have individual strategies they can pull from their proverbial toolbox, are at a place where they need (and are asking for!) this type of "big picture" look with their content areas as well.  This day was again a very meaningful experience for all of us - Mrs. Pappert shared that she was "so inspired, I changed my biography unit plans" - with teachers seeing how the experts in the work put it all together.  Again, showing us where to build in low and high emotional moments, how to wring learning moments from transitions, what to develop as possible final products and/or assessments that show kids got it and can extend the learning.   Powerful, with teachers spending time at the end revising lessons with materials they brought with them.  Ready to keep rolling in the fall.

Second and third graders, along with about 75 parents, were able to travel to The State Theatre as part of our work with Paramount's Story Wranglers.  As you know, our third grade language arts students have been working intensively all
year with several teaching artists, developing their skills in creative writing, critical thinking, and much more.  These kids are motivated to write!  Once they put their ideas on paper, the Story Wranglers put it all together and perform stories that student groups wrote. They were hilarious and those of us in the audience could see that kid humor on full display! Lots of creativity and lots of joy, with students able to introduce their stories before they were performed!  Thank you Story Wranglers for a great year at our school and we'll see 'ya next year!

Thursday morning was definitely out of the norm as well.  In an earlier blog post, I mentioned Kinder student Alistair Sharp's winning HEB Toasted Oats art entry.  And that prizes could be in store.  Happy to say, his

entry was the big elementary age winner chosen out of  1,000 entries. We were floored when contacted last week by HEB reps that not only had Alistair won a year's supply of cereal and his artwork would be featured across the state on a special Toasted Oats box (with HP mentioned on the back of the box), but that our school would receive a free cereal breakfast for all, a free t-shirt for all with Alistair's winning pic on the shirt, plus $5,000 donated to our school.  Wow!  So, bright and early yesterday morning we ate, we donned our t-shirts, and we were presented with our donation.  The monies will help support continued arts initiatives at our campus for next year, along with beautification efforts at another elementary campus.  Thanks Alistair for thinking of our school, and big 'ol thanks to Leti Mendoza and everyone at HEB for your support of keeping creativity alive in our schools.

And of course, we wouldn't get to late May without 5th grade's annual Greek Mythology Unit.  Students have been reading Greek plays, writing Greek plays (written much earlier in the year with

help from Pollyanna Theatre, creation tales, such as How the Peacock Came to Be, The Story of Io), and finally, developing their individual Greek projects for display in our halls (along with a fairly in-depth Greek Mythology assessment I'm told).  Today was performance day, it was a packed house, and again, we were all amazed at the quality of the writing and performances.  This is our second year of working with Pollyanna and it has made a tremendous, high quality difference in the level of sophistication and skill building surrounding the art of play writing, staging, costuming, acting, and much more.  Life long skills being honed on and off the stage.