Dear Students,

It is the day before I go back to work, and three days before I get to see you again for the start of the 2014-15 school year.  I miss you all and can’t wait to see you.  Will you have stories to tell me about your summer vacations?

I have been working most of the summer, but I’m not complaining.  You are all worth it to me, and I want to make sure we have a great year.  We have moved to our new school, and the new campus will bring us opportunities and challenges.  We will face both as we always do: together!  You will make many new friends, we will find new places to visit in our community, and we will use this new challenge as a way to grow and learn.

One of the curricular modifications that I have been working on is expanding our reading and writing areas.  Last year, all of you made incredible gains in your reading abilities when we really started focusing on the basics with systematic instruction.  This summer, we launched our shared reading time.  It was so fun to think about the author’s purpose and make connections to ourselves and our world when we studied the books.  Do you remember the stories we read?  We read The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson, McElligot’s Pool by Dr. Suess, The Rules of Summer by Shawn Tan, Moondogs by Daniel Kirk, and Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed.  Which was your favorite?  We are going to continue to have daily shared reading time with some really good, fun, interesting books.   But you have to promise to keep a secret.  Please don’t tell Mr. Hunt about all the books I ordered this summer with his credit card!

Yesterday, I looked over all of the stories you wrote this summer.  They were fantastic!  I am so proud of how well you are doing with our new writing curriculum.  No more tracing for you!  Each of you have an authentic writer’s voice, and together, we will continue to develop that ability.   I am sending you this letter on a blog post.  A blog is a personal web page where you can share your thoughts.  Here’s another secret…I don’t like to write!  I don’t think I’m very good at it.  But I’m going to tell myself the same thing I would tell you.  Can you think of what that might be?  You’re right, I’m going to say:

“I don’t think I’m very good at writing YET.  I just need more practice.”

This blog will be a way for our class to practice our writing.  I’m counting on you to help me.  Your stories are too good not to share!  Remember how hard we laughed at Michelle’s story about the poodle that ate the lipstick?  And how all of Frankie’s stories about Shadow the Cat made sense when he drew the picture to go with the story? Even though our writing block is difficult, I think we will also have a great deal of fun sharing our stories.

So by working together as a team this year, I know we will accomplish great things.  I want you to know that you all inspire me by your willingness to keep trying even though some of the things I ask you to do are hard.  You all are unique and special, and I want to shout that from the top of the world!  There are many people who will seek to measure, rank, and sort you by the result of a test that tells nothing about all the wonderful qualities you have and the joy you bring to the world.  Don’t let the artificial measures of others stop you from discovering all the greatness within yourself.

So here’s to learning from our mistakes, big daydreams like Marco, learning the rules of school, finding out the thing we most want is what we already have, and best friends like Pete and Pickles.  Here’s to the best school year ever!

Mrs. Freddy