This week in Language Arts, we continued practicing our Spring Sing songs every morning, some of which involves having to read the lyrics in real time, which assists in developing our fluency. We did a couple of practice paragraphs to keep our writing tight as well. Our big focus was launching our final ELA project... SCREENWRITING! That's right! Everyone in the 2nd Grade is currently writing their own scripts! We are taking it one step at a time, so that nobody gets overwhelmed. The first step was learning about what a synopsis is, and then writing a synopsis for our individual scripts. The second step was learning about outlines, and then writing our outlines! Part of the outline process included writing the names of our main characters and primary locations. It's a fun way to practice our ELA skills in a way that blends work ethic, imagination, and practical application.

One of the powerful things we do here at TCS is introduce meditation and mindfulness to our students on all levels. In addition to the practice of meditation, we're also focused on building community. We  spend time in the morning, after our warm up activity, breathing and meditating to get our bodies aligned and our minds settled into their optimal flow states for the day. We've also incorporated music into this time together. Flow state is essential to life; out of flow state, comes organic evolution.

STAR WARS DAY.

First of all, thank you all so much for being so game to celebrate the day! It was absolutely special and I will forever remember it.

I first watched the Original Trilogy (all three) when I was 7 years old. My dad had taken my brother and I to Blockbuster, and my dad picked up the Special Edition box set. My mom worked nights at the time, and both my dad and brother fell asleep.

I, however, stayed awake all night feeding the movies into our VCR until the trilogy was completed. It blew my mind. The visuals, the scope of the storytelling, the creativity with which so many powerful elements were fairly seamlessly interwoven. That night completely transformed my life, and officially launched my trajectory as a storyteller.

I share this to say that, while yes, I love Star Wars and it's a super fun property with awesome lore... it's also incredibly inspiring in so many ways. And that's what I seek to pass on to the kids. We watched the opening five minutes of A New Hope, and then we talked about what we saw. Then we watched the first five minutes of The Phantom Menace, and had a compare and contrast converation. Mixed into this was me dropping little fun fact tid bits they might not have known (like how George Lucas invented the green screen, which changed cinema forever).

The Lucas era of Star Wars represents creativity, innovation, hard work, vision, compromise, teamwork, passion, and inspiration. I celebrate Star Wars Day in the classroom, not just for the fun of it, but as another out-of-the-box way to pass on all of these box breaking traits. So thank you all for playing along.

May the Force be with you!