Sometimes you cannot plan things the way they work out, you know? In my seventh grade language arts class the first half of class follows a routine:
- Kids enter, check in on Google Sheets for their Status of the Class, visit with friends.
- After a few minutes, I ask them to find a spot and they read for the next ten. (Twenty more minutes of independent reading is their nightly homework.)
- Next, we move to the front of the room for a book talk. They are assigned one a quarter, I book talk every Friday.
- After book talks we often have a quick grammar lesson or vocabulary lesson.
- Then we have a quick write which typically takes around 5-10 minutes.
- We end the first half of class with a picture book for Classroom Book A Day.
On Wednesday we had an early dismissal, shortening each class period from 44 minutes to around 30. As such, we missed our picture book and I set it aside for Thursday thinking nothing of it.
Thursday dawned and class began. As I moved to pull up our slide for the quick write, I realized I was having them write about an article today instead of a typical video or image. We read THIS article.
Tears threatened to spill out.
Then I turned and looked under the document camera to see what picture book I had selected for Wednesday, now bumped to Thursday.
Oh. My. Goodness.
Now, if you don’t know this story, let me just tell you that getting through it once without sobbing was a minor miracle. Doing it three times in a day, I should have bought a lotto ticket, I was that lucky.
More than one student was wiping off their faces when I glanced up.
When someone asked if I planned on having these two texts together for our day's lesson, I had to admit I hadn’t.
But then I book talked this.
Because if we’re going to go there, let’s go all in. Right?
