AWESOME!

This summer, a friend of mine who's a teacher introduced me to The Book Of Awesome by Neil Pasricha, published in 2010. It's a great book, based on his blog 1000awesomethings.com (he has since written The Book Of Even More Awesome and The Book Of (Holiday) Awesome). The idea of the book is to look all around you and see that, even if things are not going so well, there are many, little awesome things in your life. Some examples of things he describes as being AWESOME! are: the last day of school, sweatpants, going through the car wash with little kids, fixing electronics by smacking them, bedhead all day long, dangling your feet in water, the smell of freshly cut grass, and so on. You may have heard of Mr. Pasricha and his blog, as his countdown from #1000 to #1 concluded last week, and he was featured on a number of newscasts.

Towards the latter part of the school year, I often lead the class through a unit on persuasive writing in Writers' Workshop. I was talking about how much I loved The Book Of Awesome to another friend of mine who's also teacher, and that I was sad that the blog was going to be ending, now that Mr. Pasricha had reached #1 on his AWESOME! list. I was also mentioning to my friend how Mr. Pasricha had said that one of his favourite parts of doing the blog and the books was that he often got AWESOME! books from schools, where students had picked their own awesome things to write about. My friend said "You could do that with your class for your persuasive writing unit."

"Brilliant!" I said.

So, this week, we have begun talking about AWESOME! things. We read a bunch of the AWESOME! things together earlier in the week, and then today as well. I wanted to write one together as a class, to give them a taste what they will eventually be expected to do on their own. The structure is fairly simple:

- A title

- A hook/lead

- A paragraph (or more) describing the thought

- A closing (which is always 'AWESOME!')

My plan, after reading a few more entries from the book, was to brainstorm a list of AWESOME! things with the students. We were just beginning this, when the secretary buzzed in to let one of the students in our class know that he was being signed out of school early (lucky!). Right after he left, one of the students said "Being signed out of school early on a Friday would be is pretty awesome - we could write about that!"... so we did! Check out our first AWESOME! thing that we wrote together as a class - enjoy!

Leaving school early on a Friday

Have you ever gotten to leave school early on a Friday, while the rest of your classmates had to stay behind?
It's the day before the weekend, and you're sitting in class, watching the clock tick, wondering if the end of the day will ever come. The next thing you know, you hear the PA in your room bing. It's the voice of the school's secretary, asking if the teacher can send you down to the office, because you're being signed out early. You're surprised! You can't believe it! "I get to leave early?!", you think to yourself. You're too polite to say "WOOHOO!" in front of your classmates, but they can all see the excitement on your face. You try not to smile too much as you walk out, and everybody tells you to have a good weekend. You feel so excited as you pack up your backpack, and walk to meet your mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa at the office. When you get out of the school, you say "Free at last!", and you feel...

AWESOME!