An emotional couple of days...

I am still not able to believe and understand the events that took place on Friday in CT.  My heart breaks for everyone affected by this and everyday, I have been thinking of those poor babies, both the survivors who witnessed the events and those who lost their lives too soon.   This past Friday bought up some memories of when, during my second year of teaching, we had a lock down but it was not a practice one.  A man, who had a gun and was trying to escape the police, ran into a back door of the school I was working in. He knew that door was always open because he had gone to that school years ago and that door was open because of the large classroom trailers we had in the back of the school grounds.  My students were across the hall in the library and, after the lock down was called, I was able to go to them.  The reason I left my room was because we had just gotten brand new doors and only the principal had the working keys.  He had to go around and lock the doors-and of course, mine was not staying locked.  

We were sitting on the floor of the library for 3 hours-no bathroom, no food, and not really knowing what was going on.  I was able to communicate with my mother via text and a friend who worked down the hall from me.  We did not know if the gunman was still in the school, if he had a gun still-nothing.  After about 2 1/2 hours, SWAT came to our door with all of their gear and my class burst into tears-they saw a gun up close and even though SWAT was there to help us, they were petrified.  We were finally given the all clear to all evacuate the school and our kids were able to get back to their family members.   I later found out that the man had dropped the gun prior to entering the school and ran into a bathroom, climbed up the walls, and hid in the air ducts above the classrooms.  He climbed all around until he fell through one into the courtyard and was trapped-that was when police and SWAT were able to move in and arrest him.  His accomplice was found later on.  It was one of the scariest moments of my life.  My students were very scared and I just thinking about that day, makes me want to cry for the community of Newtown, CT.  My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in that town.

This holiday season, I will be thinking about those angels and their families.

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 I love the Rock Star Gingerbread!

Here are some more pictures of our Gingerbread or "jengibre" unit from last week.  We created speech bubbles where the students had to create a sentence that would try and persuade the fox to leave him alone.  We have been working with word order and using sight words when writing on Spanish days and I found that giving the students the words, all mixed up, and then having them cut them and glue them in the correct order to make a sentence has been working better than having them copy a model and finishing a sentence.  This method has been making them really think about sentence structure and using their "Writer's Eyes" to monitor their sentences.

I promise to post pics from our "Celebrations around the World"!!!! 

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Alyson Hennessy