This week, in lieu of a Dear Gaila column, I'm going to share with you the details of this year's Academic Fair.
A.H.A.V.A.'s Academic Fair is more than an opportunity for the students and parents to see how much the children have accomplished throughout the year. It is an opportunity for teachers as well - they can see how much their students have progressed in just one year! I've found that this gives everyone a good sense of accomplishment and motivation to gear up for the next year.
So what goes on during the fabulous Academic Fair?
Parents, grandparents and excited students started coming in at 15:30. Each class displays works of students throughout the year:
Every visitor gets 5 stars to stick onto the 5 best works they see, in addition to infinite post it notes they can give works. Students love the feedback!
Children created personalized bookmarks.
On one side they chose a Dr. Suess quote (here is a list of them), on the other they chose a 2,3,4 letter grapheme and listed a few words like those on the back.
I hope these students will use the bookmarks when reading for their Reading Logs! (I'll tell you more about the Reading Logs as a summer reading enticement in a later Dear Gaila column).
Batya Mirsky's Kfar Adumim 8th graders created 3 short parody clips (they had done a unit on parodies):
We handed out little booklets of "Best of A.H.A.V.A." - every student handed in one entry.
At 16:30 we started the ceremony. Our Kindergarten always says the ABC together. This year I had a first - one of my own grandchildren was up there!
I gave a little speech, handed out certificates of excellence, thank yous and graduation certificates for those finishing our program.
Students came up and shared a piece of their work:
And of course we finished off with our traditional ice creams!
It was a great success. Now I need to recuperate from all that work... Teacher Training Seminars coming up next month...
If you want to register your child for 2016-17 the contracts are up on the site.
Gaila
Gaila has almost 40 year of experience teaching and runs A.H.A.V.A., a non-profit to promote English literacy. Would you like to ask Gaila a question? Email us at ahava.org@gmail.com or send us a message. Look out for more Dear Gaila columns