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!