Mesa Verde Poetry Performance

Today was the day! We arrived at the elementary school to get set up before the students arrived so that we could do a quick walk through of how things would work. It took us a little longer than we expected to get set up so when the middle school students arrived we didn’t have time to walk them through how things would go. The students got into costumes and talked briefly with their coaches about any anxieties they were having and did a quick run through of their lines and then the younger students started to arrive. The first performance was for 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders and the second performance was for kindergarten, 1^st, and 2^nd grade. When each group of students came in we got them all seated and the poetry coaches opened with a poetry jingle/song. Afterwards we handed the floor to the heights students. I could tell that there were some nerves in play as the students performed but each group that got up to perform did fantastic! I am very impressed and proud of how well they did today. We ended both performances with the poetry coaches performing a James and the Giant Peach poem and we threw candy into the audience; which the kids loved! We got all of the students out of the building on time and were able to clean up and reflect on how the day went. There were a few minor glitches in the performance that made things a little more difficult, but overall the performances went off wonderfully and I think both students and coaches were proud of what had been accomplished!