Celebration Saturday

 

     I'm so happy that Ruth Ayres started a Celebrate Link-Up on her blog!!!  I will be joining the celebration every Saturday!!

 

Here are my celebrations this week:

 

1.  I got my name badge for NCTE!!  I'm so excited about this event!

 

2.  I wrote on my Slice on Tuesday that @kbport714 had sent multiple copies of Tuck Everlasting after I lamented that I didn't have any in my classroom library.  I love that I was able to pass a few forward to a teacher at a nearby career center school that needed them because she didn't have many books in her library.  How serendipitous was it that she need multiple copies of THAT title?!  Amazing.  Of course, I still kept one back for my own library, and handed it to a student yesterday who is going to love it!

3.  I was SO excited that I was mentioned in Mr. Schu's blog about his Mock Newbery choices because Aaron Becker had made a video for our class answering questions about Journey.  Being mentioned by Mr. Schu in the same breath as talking about Aaron Becker makes me feel like celebrating. ;-)  I loved Aaron Becker's tweet in response to my excitement:

@MuellerHolly @MrSchuReads You're famous!
— Aaron Becker (@storybreathing) November 7, 2013

 4.  Tuesday was our in-service day.  I presented on Teaching Gifted Student in the Regular ELA Classroom.  I love presenting!  It's so fun to share with colleagues.  I also loved one of the presentations I went to by one of our district's 8th grade teachers.  He did a talk about writing, and he was excellent!

5.  I celebrate the publication of Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller!  I was excited to see my copy on the doorstep on Monday!

 

6.  I celebrate my husband because he shopped and prepped food for a Wildtree freezer meal home party at my friend, Megan's.  It was quite a time-consuming job, and he was awesome to do all that for me!  It was fun to just open up an already-prepped meal the next night for dinner!

7.  I loved that I got this e-mail at school after our #ReadWalkWater event appeared in the newspaper over the weekend:

Dear Ms. Mueller,

I read about the above project in the November 3rd edition of Today's Pulse Warren County.  What an absolutely unique and meaningful project to be undertaken by school children, who for the most part experience very few if any unmet physical needs themselves.

I wanted to extend my congratulations to both the children and you for your involvement. Additionally, my husband and I would like to make a small donation towards the fund raising efforts.

Please email me with the information I need to do so.

 

Thank you.

8.  Speaking of #ReadWalkWater, I love that Megan's school, Berry Intermediate did the walk, too!  Read about it in her blog, Adventures in Learning!

9.  I celebrate the discussion we had while building a concept map around our theme topic in gifted ELA right now:  FEAR.  The kids were so insightful about fear and what we're really afraid of - we ended up joking about the fact that our ELA class became a psychology class for an hour!  I love when we give kids an opportunity to talk and explore.  They come up with some amazing things!

10.  Last night,  I celebrated Ellie, an aspiring Broadway star and daughter of one of my best friends.  Our group got together to watch her in "A Chorus Line" at a theater in Cincinnati.  She did a great job!  It's so exciting to see her pursue her dreams.  We can't wait to see where she will choose to go to college to study performance!!

It's been another great week!  Now I'm looking forward to hearing about YOUR celebrations!!