Preschool students listened to Wait by Antoinette Portis. They love it, because it only has two words--hurry (the mom always says this, shocker) and wait, which the boy always says. It is predictable, and fun!
AK kids enjoyed a Mo Willems book, Watch Me Throw the Ball. As always, a big hit! Plus, searching for the pigeon hiding in the book is always fun!
Second graders are studying fables in their classrooms, so we read one of my favorites, The Lion & the Mouse. We looked at the wordless version by Jerry Pinkney. This book is one of my favorites--how could it not be? We talked about the four things fables always have: short stories, animal characters, animals who have human characteristics, and a moral/lesson. I love talking about the lesson in this one, because there are so many. Aesop wrote that, "little friends may prove great friends." However, we usually word it that little creatures/people can do big things. And then we tie in how important it is to be kind because you never know when someone you are kind to might be kind back. So many good things!
4th graders had the hardest lesson of the year, regarding citations. It is so hard to teach, and kind of hard for students to pick up on. The most important thing in 4th grade is that they understand that it is wrong to take someone else's work with giving credit. Students do have some background knowledge, as it's a skill we work on in third grade, too. First we watched a video. I really like how this explains it, and we talk about it more in depth. For citing a website, we ask for the title of the site, the URL, and the date accessed. It's not perfect, and might need revisiting, but it helps scaffold for our 4th graders as they get older.
Kindergarten, first, and third grades all continued in our Mock Caldecott unit. This week, we read two books: Wait by Antoinette Portis, and The Night World by Mordecai Gerstein.
The kinders and firsties used Seesaw to explain which of the three we've read so far that they liked the best. Here's some of their work:
The third graders commented on which book they liked better and why in their Google Classroom. The students from Council Bluffs have started writing in there with us as well! I can't wait for this week to take the project even further!
I can't wait to get all the books read and see who kids vote for! Also, January 11th is when the award is announced--I'm itching to know! I have about 3 favorites so far that I'm rooting for!
