LITERACY REMIX III: On the Road Again
Team Kirkwood Literacy Lab is off to visit more schools as guest readers. We had a blast at Book’em’s annual “Read Me Day”celebration. We visited Ms. Vasili’s fourth-grade class at Robert E. Lillard Elementary to read a fun book entitled I Didn’t Do It by Patricia MacLachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest.
After reading the story, we showed photos of our own three dogs. We asked the students to guess which one chewed up a slipper, buried a bone in the garden, or made a puddle on the rug.
The discussion transitioned from humor to sadness when I shared a story about our late dog named Foxie. One day Foxie found a packaged blueberry muffin, after trying to eat the muffin, she couldn’t remove her head from the package and suffocated before we found her. The students and teachers were filled with shock and sorrow.
We recalled the sadness and grief we experienced. Our daughter Juliette was especially disheartened because she was Foxie’s caretaker. To our surprise, as we talked about our pain, the students began to open up and share stories about their own experiences of losing a pet.
But the session ended on a happy note. We told them that we had a real funeral to honor Foxie with a program, music, a prayer of comfort given by my uncle, Elder Russell Bates (you met him in an earlier blog post), and a repast. The students’ eyes lit up with surprise as they laughed and giggled at the thought of a funeral for a dog.
