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!