Let's Celebrate!

I'm so excited that Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build. is hosting CELEBRATE This Week! What a fun meme where we celebrate one thing or many things from the week. I've loved participating in the Slice of Life Challenge that Ruth started with Stacey at Two Writing Teachers and now am really looking forward to this! 

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This week I'm celebrating a few things!

*throws confetti*

1. It's the first official CELEBRATE This Week Link-Up! I have loved Slice of Life and sharing more about what's going on in my life here at Teach Mentor Texts and I'm a completely optimist who loves to celebrate all the good things going on in the world so I'm thrilled for this meme. 
2. Tomorrow Peanut and I are sharing his love of reading over on the Nerdy Book Club blog. I'm so excited that he did a post with me. It was a lot of fun and I can tell it had him thinking about how the Internet works and how it means other people will be reading his story. We have been making lots of loom band bracelets lately and we are fans of a girl named Ashely who posts how-to videos on YouTube. Some of her videos have 1 million and 3 million views. We've talked a lot about what that means and how many people that really is. It's pretty cool. I'm not sure we'll get a million views on our Nerdy post but it's still fun to think that we're sharing with a lot of other people.                                                                                                              
3. I've been cruising along on my Book Gap challenge! I actually only have one book left to read! I wasn't sure how far I was going to get because I felt kind of behind but it's October and I have one more book to read. My last book to read is The Princess Bride. The book I've loved the most so far and finished recently was Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I really loved Anne. She's such a spunky, imaginative character who reminds me a lot of Hattie from Hattie Big Sky and Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. 
4. One last thing to celebrate: I've started a free-writing notebook. Since the beginning of the school year, I have been meeting with a great group of eighth grade students to talk about writing and share what I've learned from Teachers Write. Every day, they have sacred writing time where they free write. They've been building their stamina and write for 3-4 minutes now. I usually see them once a week but I haven't been keeping up with my free writing when I'm not in their classroom. Over the summer, I had a great experience with free writing and remembered how much I love free writing so I decided to start a free-writing notebook where I can free-write every day. So far it's been three days and I've done a free write every day. Finding 3-5 minutes to just let my mind wander seems like a great investment. I'm still working on revisions of my novel but also have a new idea that I want to draft so my plan is to free write about either of these stories - or something new that catches my attention - every day. I shared this goal with my eighth grade students so they hold me accountable and also to show that writing isn't always easy, we all have to set goals and work at it if we're actually going to write. 

Thanks for stopping by to celebrate with me!

What are you celebrating this week?