Success comes in all shapes and sizes...

I have to share some of my proudest moments from the past week. I have been working super hard and super long to make sure we have fun, engaging lessons. And yes, a lot of my ideas are coming from other bloggers, pinterest, and TpT, but that is what this community is for right? Anyways... we have been working on drawing conclusions and it is always one of the hardest skills for my kids to "get". So a few weeks ago I began scouring the internet for ideas. And boy were there some good ones (posts coming soon about those... they aren't important in this post). And I knew it was a successful week when one of my students who really struggles with reading "got" it. He knew what we were doing and he knows what it means. Not only that... but because we have been having so much fun learning, this child, who typically gets the "ugly face" any time any reading/language arts lesson comes up, has been volunteering. He is not a good reader. He will tell you that. But when we were reading out loud from Charlotte's Web (which is a higher level than most my students read at, especially this boy) his hand shot up in the air to volunteer. And when we were going over grammar homework (possessive nouns, another skill my kids usually struggle with), again he was shooting his hand in the air to volunteer. And on Friday when he took his grammar test, he got a 95! This from a child who usually just circles any answer and writes anything down because he "knows" he "can't do it". Another thing... usually when he asks me to spell a word and I sound it out for him, he doesn't try. Lately, when I break the words apart he has been trying... and mostly succeeding with his spelling of the words. I have never been so proud of a child as I am of this boy. And I just had to share. It's times like these that I remember why I teach... and realize that not letting the stress of all the "other" stuff get to me is really worth it.