Week of September 21

Our preschool & AK students read the book called The Woods by Paul Hoppe. Preschool checked out a fiction picture book again, and AK got to choose a fiction and a non-fiction.

Kindergarten students read an alphabet book called Twenty-Six Pirates by Dave Horowitz. There was a pirate whose name started with each letter, and they did something that had a rhyme--ie. "Pirate Frank walked the plank." I thought this book was really funny, and it had letter sounds and rhymes, both of which we'd been focusing on.

First graders wrapped up our text-self, text-text, & text-world connections comprehension strategy. We read the book The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and we talked about different connections we could make. With a little prompting, we were able to get tons of connections! This is kind of a long book, so I opted to use my iPad version. I still read it, but the sound effects and background music gave it a cool effect. The kids loved it, and I did too! I've never read it out loud before!

Our second grade students were practicing the 5 Ws last week--who, what, where, when, why & how. To practice, we read My Teacher is a Monster (No I Am Not!) by Peter Brown. Then, we filled out a chart with columns for each W. 

To fill out the chart, we tossed around a beach ball that had the words written on it. Then that student read the word under their writing hand, and came up and filled in the columns.

Our charts all looked similar to this one! 

Third & fourth graders spent the week finishing up their book selfie scavenger hunts. Third graders are working on using call numbers to find books on the shelves, and fourth graders are doing more advanced searches using Lexile levels. Kids just love this activity, and I do too! Plus, it's great practice for independently locating books!

This week (September 28) is a short week, so we're looking at Bookflix/Trueflix and doing some reading, and then we'll start back up with lessons next week!

Week of September 14

Another week down! Here's the week in review:

Preschool read My Friend Rabbit and checked out a picture book. They're practicing looking at the signs in that section and selecting a book of interest.

AK students read My Friend Rabbit as well. This week was the first time they checked out a non-fiction title. We walked through the non-fiction books about animals and picked out one of those.

Kindergartener's heard the story I Love My Hat by Douglas Florian. This book is full of rhymes, which is what kindergartners are working on right now. After reading, we used the Promethean board to identify rhymes. Many of the rhymes were from the book, matching an animal to an article of clothing. The rest of them were matching rhyming animals. They dragged an image out of the "magic orange box" and matched it up with the rhyme. 

First graders got a little lesson on libraries around the world, so that we can continue to practice text-to-world connections. First, we made a list of how kids can get books. Then I showed them pictures of many libraries, and we read some pages from My Librarian is a Camel by Margriet Ruurs.

Second grade students learned about homophones & homonyms in their classrooms this week, and got some extra practice during library. We looked at some pages from the book How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear? by Bryan P. Cleary. We used the Promethean board to drag synonyms on top of the book pages, and to spell out some homophones/homonyms.

Third graders again practiced logging in to the computers and getting in to the library catalog. We practiced searching books and looking for the call number. To show they knew where the call number is, we used the Plickers cards after searching a particular book. Next week we'll practice using the call numbers to find the books! 

Fourth graders began a book scavenger hunt. They have to find 3 books the meet a keyword and Lexile level criteria, then take a book selfie with that book. They put the selfies into a Google Doc to send to me. We'll finish working on this next week!

I really, really love book selfies :) 

Week of Sept. 8

Last week we started moving past some yearly introduction and into some serious learning! Here's a recap of what each grade level was working on:

In AK we read "Duck, Duck, Moose" by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. We are introducing the words fiction (make-believe) and non-fiction (real). This week we only checked out fiction picture books, and next week we'll look at non-fiction!
                                             
                                            


Our kindergarteners practiced telling a story using only pictures. To do this, we read the wordless book "Chalk" by Bill Thomson. It is one of my very favorites, and the kids loved it! Plus, they figured out that pictures can sometimes tell the WHOLE story! We also talked about where all of the wordless books live in our library so the students could check them out if they wanted.

First grade students were practicing text-to-self connections. First, we read the book "Children Make Terrible Pets" by Peter Brown. When the students made a connection while we were reading, I showed them a way to link their fingers together to show the connection. 

After we read, each student told us their connection, and then we recorded them together. Here is a slideshow of our connections! Some students didn't have a connection, which is okay since we don't always connect to a text...especially when it's one someone else picks out. Many of us were able to make connections about pets or about how they are similar to the boy!

Second graders practiced retelling a story using the story elements of setting, characters, beginning-middle-end, and problem/solution. We read a book called "Duck, Duck, Moose" by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen.

Then we dragged different pictures representing the story elements into their correct boxes. It has been great getting to put our Promethean board to use! Students love coming up and dragging, drawing, and writing things! (More about that, plus some pictures next week!) Our story maps ended up looking like this:

Our 3rd and 4th grade students reviewed how to log in to our online library catalog called Destiny. This is where students can look up their checkout info, plus look up new books to check out. We've been working on locating the title, author, call number, and Lexile level. There is a fun app called Plickers that I have been able to use to gather some formative assessment data. It is an easy way for students to tell me their answer, then I scan the cards around the room, and it gives me a chart! It's awesome! Then I can tell which students need to work on which skills. We will be using this data at the end of the unit to review and master all of the skills needed.

I forgot to take a picture that shows how the process looks, but we're using it again this week, so stay tuned!

Read100

As a way to encourage daily reading, we have decided to implement a program we will call Read100. Read100 is a simple way to track independent reading minutes at home. Students will bring home a monthly calendar where they record their minutes each day. At the end of each week, students total up how many minutes they read, with the goal being 100 minutes. At the end of the month, students return the sheet and get to put their picture up on the wall as part of the Read100 club. We will track the total minutes each student reads over the course of the year, and provide different incentives for milestones along the way.

Here's what our calendars look like for this month.

And here's our #read100 wall in the hallway. Student and staff pictures will be posted underneath whatever minute total they've read to. I've only got through 600 minutes up so far, but we'll be going higher soon! After 600, we'll start counting by 200's.

I'm excited to see how this turns out and track our minutes we read! 

Beginning of the Year Fun!

Our year is off to a great start! Here are some pictures and activities from week one:

We have such awesome readers, and some great spaces to read in! All of our PK-4th students were able to come in at least once to check out books!

Our 3rd & 4th graders did a digital scavenger hunt to find out about new displays and other things new in the library this year. There were 12 short (10-15 second) podcasts that I created using a website/app called AudioBoom. I took a picture of each area, then recorded my voice explaining the picture. I made a QR code for each podcast, then hung them up around the room. It worked really well, and kids still listened to me (my voice) but didn't have to sit still to do it. 

And at the end of the week, I kicked my feet up and did some reading. A perfect end to a great first week of school!