Black History Month and American Heart Month

It is hard to believe that we have turned the page on the calendar and are now in February. In case you did not know, February is Black History Month. At KES, we are celebrating it by taking a moment each day on the morning announcements to read about an African-American who has had a positive impact on our country. We have already shared about Thurgood Marshall (First African-American Supreme Court Judge), Shirley Chisholm (Congresswoman from New York), and Colin Powell. We have a couple more political leaders this week and will be highlighting entertainers next week.
February is also American Heart Month. That makes sense because it is in February when we celebrate the people that we love on Valentine's Day. That is one reason it is Heart Month, but the other reason is to encourage people to make healthy choices that will strengthen their hearts so that they can live longer. This week alone, we have had the Dacula Elementary School Jmp Rope Team perform for us. The Kennedy students were very respectful as they watched 3r-5th graders from Dacula perform some amazing tricks with jump ropes. I know a lot of our students were so excited by it that they asked coach Thompson if he would start a team at Kennedy. That would be really cool! We will also have another presentation on Friday when Health M Powers comes to do the healthy choice assemblies for us. These presentations will talk to students about making healthy choices that will make their bodies stronger.
While February is "officially" Black History and American Heart month, it has become "unofficially" 5th Graders Write Month. Our 5th Graders have started their final preparations for the Georgia Writing Assessment in March by taking all the weeks in February to take an entire piece of writing completely through the writing process (Brainstorm -> Rough Draft -> Revise and Edit -> Publish (final copy)). So far they have done a persuasive essay about why one of their relatives should win "Relative of the Year". The 5th Grade teachers along with other Kennedy Staff spent the weekend scoring them to pick a "Best of the Best" writing sample for each class. The winners were Gabe Rodriguez (Allen), Phoebe Milledge (Hixson), and Ryan Cavey (Liptak). Each of them got to eat lunch with Mrs. Sears and me today. I look forward to scoring the samples this weekend. The genre is informational writing. They are telling us about their day as the President of the United States. I am very proud of how much our 5th Graders are improving in their writing.