Week of January 25

We kickstarted this week with storyteller Darrin Crow on Tuesday. He presented to 3rd grade about the Underground Railroad and to 2nd grade students about immigration. Darrin is such fun to listen to, and he totally captivates our kids.

Also this week, I hooked up some iPads to use as search stations. We had a couple of computers that I wanted to use, but the cords were missing and there were other issues, so I got these iPad clamps from Scholastic. They work pretty well! I used Guided Access on the iPads to lock them into the Destiny search app. Here are some 3rd grade boys using it for the first time. 

We'll start with 4th grade this week and work our way down, just for kicks. 

Fourth graders learned about iClipart and how to download their (free to us) photos. Iowa AEA supplies us with this tool, and I'm so grateful! Students did want to go to Google Images, but we started with iClipart, and I explained how we don't have to do a formal citation of those images and that it would save them bunches of time. They didn't complain too much after that. Next week we should be ready to start making the video book book trailers using WeVideo!

Third graders started doing research on the famous African American that they chose last week. They used iPads with Britannica online and put their notes in their Google Doc on their Chromebook. It was awesome to see kids excited about doing research--I had really good intentions of snapping some pictures but didn't! Next time, I promise.

The second graders are still working on getting their robots to drive through their story map. We are getting close to wrapping up--maybe 2 more weeks. 

First graders played the game Telephone, then read the book called Telephone by Mac Barnett. We used the illustrations to predict what would be coming next. Playing the game was so funny--one of the messages got changed to "I love you" and every single kid giggled when they heard it and passed it on.

Kindergarteners are still learning about life long ago. We read Prairie Day which is one of the picture books in the My First Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It describes their life while traveling west in their covered wagon. 

Our AK and preschool students read Frog on a Log by Kes Gray & Jim Field. It is a fun book full of rhymes. It always cracks me up, because when students first grasp the concept of rhyming, every time they hear a rhyme they shout it out. 

2 Weeks of Updates

I forgot to update last week! Last week kindergarten, first, and third grades read Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick, illustrated by Sophie Blackall, which won the Caldecott Medal last Monday. After reading the book, almost every student was pleased that it won the gold medal. I can't wait until the Caldecott seals arrive that I ordered so I can stick the medal on the book! It was definitely a student and staff favorite!

This week the kindergarteners started learning about life long ago in Social Studies. We talked a bit about what school used to be like, even though they learn more about that in 1st grade. We read a book called Life at School and then looked at some pictures of one-room schoolhouses. Their favorite picture by far was of the outhouse toilet, of course! 

First graders have been practicing making predictions, so we used one of my favorite books of all time, called A Fly Went By by Mike McClintock. It is about a boy who sees a fly go by, then a frog, then a cat, then a dog, and goes on and on. But none of the animals is trying to get the other one, they are running from someone who is behind them! The kids had fun using text and picture clues to guess who is coming next. I'm so glad I got to share this story--my Granny read me this book all the time as a kid, and it is a family favorite!

3rd graders started a new research unit this week. They are each going to be learning facts about a famous African American who was influential during the slavery and civil rights eras. They were given a long list to choose from this week, and next week we'll start taking some notes! 

Our 4th graders kept working on the book trailers that they're writing. We're finally ready to move on in creating the movie next week. We'll be using a Chrome app called WeVideo to create them. The kids have worked hard on writing them and making changes--sometimes the hardest thing is to get thoughts out of your head and written down, so I'm proud of their progress!

The second graders continue to work on programming their robots to go through their story map. I'm hoping to spend only 2 more weeks working on them. I'm learning a lot about how to organize the robots and match them up with students, and how to teach patience and perseverance. The kids love it, and they're learning along with me!

Also, I learned that the Ozobots we got can use Ozoblockly to program them! This is the coolest thing I've seen--you build the program, hold the robot against the computer screen, it loads the program, and voila--you're set! So cool! I can't wait to show it to students at coding club on Wednesday. 

Speaking of coding club, here are some picture of our 3rd graders tinkering with robots! We've been splitting time between Scratch, Code.org, and robots. We have Sphero balls, Ozobots, Dash, and Blue Bots. The kids love them all! 

First Week of the Year!

Our first week back to school was amazing, of course! Our kindergarten, first, and 3rd students voted for the Mock Caldecott, and the results are quite interesting!

Here are the total votes for the kindergarten and first graders. Finding Winnie was the winner, with Growing Up Pedro and The Night World in a tie for second, and Wolfie the Bunny coming in next. We hadn't read all of the books, so students rotated between tables looking at all of the books during class this week.

Our third graders, along with Mrs. Kleinmeyer's third graders in Council Bluffs voted like this:

Obviously, Growing Up Pedro won by a landslide, which surprised me, quite frankly. I didn't expect any of the books to win by that much because so many of them were so good! We just read that book this week, so I'm wondering if that affected the vote. I also realized that this is probably the first non-fiction book we've read aloud this year. Many students, particularly boys, prefer non-fiction, especially about sports, which may have influenced the vote, also. 

Tomorrow the real Caldecott winners will be announced. I'll have the live feed on in the library, though it might just be over by the time we start school since it's on East Coast time. I can't wait to see who the winners are & read and discuss the books this week. Quite frankly, I'm a little bit anxious to see who wins!

The second graders took a week off from our robot/fairy tale projects to practice non-fiction text features for an upcoming assessment. We used a beginning reader series from Scholastic about animals to practice using the table of contents, glossary, and index. I linked a 3 question Google Form to each book and students used iPads to answer the questions. Then, I can go in and view the answers using a tool called Flubaroo. After seeing the results from each quiz, I can reteach or move on as needed.

Fourth graders have begun working on creating a book trailer for a book they read over winter vacation. Writing the script is the hardest part, which is what we're working on now. We will have some fun movies to show off in a few weeks!