Papa K and I met with our new fourth graders a couple of weeks ago and we were more nervous and excited than the students.
I asked if they knew anything about us. Many hands went up — the one response which caught us off guard was, “ You are old, you have gray hair.”
Someone else said, “You bring food and read.” Now that was the response we were expecting! Nevertheless, we assured them that although Papa K is bald and I have a crown of gray hair, our hearts and minds are still very young.
As we dug deeper to get to know the students, we asked the basic question, What do you want to be when you grow up? Most of the boys dreamed of sports, football, basketball, and baseball. I will talk more about that later. A couple of girls aspire to be dancers, while we heard one shout for engineer, mathematician, scientist, teacher, and soccer player. This will help us in deciding what books to introduce and bring to life.
Our 2019-2020 literacy theme is “Embrace the Journey.”
Then, as we have for the past four years, we kicked off Team Kirkwood’s Literacy (Lab) program by reading “Each Kindness” by Jacqueline Woodson (one of my favorite authors). See my 8/31/2018 News Blog for more details regarding a list of discussion questions.
After the group discussion, the students were asked to share with the class one kind deed that they had done. Some of the responses were:
“I played with my sister because she was bored.”
“I helped my Granny up and down the stairs.”
“I helped my sister with her homework and my mother with the groceries.”
“I read a book to my sister.”
“I helped my grandmother after her knee surgery.”
“I gave a homeless person my snack.”
“I helped my brother and nephew get dressed.”
In an effort to move this lesson into their long-term memory, we gave them a “Kind Deed” assignment. They were asked to journal (for two weeks) by listing the kind deed and the person that the kindness was shown or extended. I will let you know how the students did in completing this assignment. We concluded the session by reciting the “ Kindness Pledge” from the Be Kind People Project. You could hear us all the way down the third-floor hall.
To help keep the many handouts organized that they will receive this school year, we gave each student a notebook and dividers provided by sponsors Ms. Anaxet Jones and Mr. Kenneth Ford. A heartfelt thanks also is extended to one of our major sponsors, Staples, for providing a copy of the Each Kindness book cover and the Kind Pledge for each student.
I will be blogging soon about the our second visit entitled, What We Did This Summer.