Week of April 25

Some weeks honestly feel like they last about 20 days instead of 5, and this was one of those weeks. I think that happens more often as the school year winds down, which I still can't believe is even happening! We are down to 21.5 days...that's crazy to me. It's definitely the time of year that I start cramming in all of the things that we haven't gotten to yet, but I feel like we never get to everything!

Monday our student leadership council kids got to deliver the $200 of books that we had donated at our last book fair. It was a great experience for the kids and for me to see some of our kids out in the "real world" asking questions and learning. It was also fun to eat out at McDonald's on our way back to school. Our kids were so perfect and we got lots of compliments from strangers about how great they were.

Kindergarten continued our author study of Mo Willems by reading 3 more Pigeon books. Next week we'll move on to Elephant & Piggie, as the last book comes out on Tuesday. I just preordered two copies--one for me, and one for the library! I'm secretly hoping Amazon delivers it on Monday instead of Tuesday...but we'll see.

First graders did another compare and contrast with Goldilocks & the 3 Bears by Gennady Spirin, and Goldilocks and the 3 Dinosaurs by Mo Willems.

Second graders had a focus on chapter books in literacy last week. I put together a YouTube playlist of great chapter book series for first and second grade readers. Each student had an iPad and watched the videos that they were interested in, and then they checked out some good-fit chapter books. This is really the point that many young readers truly start doing meaningful independent reading. It is so fun and rewarding to see them excited about books, and we are truly blessed to have an amazing new collection that we add to so often! 

I made a few book trailers about beginning chapter books, and the kids loved watching the videos I made, which made me feel like quite the star! It was hilarious!

Third graders started our final project: creating a video book trailer. In fourth grade we do this as a huge project that always takes way too much time, but third grade does a short & sweet version. They pick a picture book and read it (which is what we did this week), then fill out a quick graphic organizer, and use ChatterPix to record a video. This year I'm going to also give them the option of using the green screen like I did. I'm excited to see the final products!

Fourth graders continued taking notes about Greek gods and goddesses in preparation for our Jeopardy game in two weeks. I formed a handful of questions and they were able to answer all of them! I am excited to come up with some prizes and incentives for the game. The most important thing they're learning is teamwork, and they are doing well. We've had conversations about collaborative note-taking and how important it is for everyone to do their share. So far, so good, it seems!

Week of April 18

We kicked the week off by celebrating my 30th birthday on Monday! It was such a great day! There were so many treats and gifts that we had to set up an extra table!

On Monday the kindergarteners & 1st graders got to watch a puppet presentation from Mr. Darin Crow. He is so amazing! I asked the students throughout the week what they thought, and they all seemed to really like it. He focused on fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

Kindergarteners this week started an author study about Mo Willems. He is truly one of my favorites and the kids all love his books. Many of them had seen some of the Pigeon, Elephant & Piggie, and Knuffle Bunny books, but didn't know that they all had the same author. We read a few pages from our biography about Mo, then read Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. I also taught all of them how to draw the pigeon, and I think they were surprised with how easy it was!

First graders are learning how to compare and contrast stories. Mr. Crow told the story of the 3 Little Pigs, and then we read a version from the book called The Wolf at the Door. Then we used a Venn diagram to compare/contrast the stories on our Promethean board. 

Second graders read an article about Earth Day from Time for Kids then answered questions and talked about how important it is to recycle!

Third graders talked about haiku, diamante, and acrostic poems. We looked at the pattern for each, read some examples, and then wrote some together as a class.

The 4th graders began studying Greek mythology. Some kids have some prior knowledge from reading the Myth-o-Mania series, but there were some kids who had no idea. I think it's safe to say that they're all excited now! Each class is split into 3 teams and they are dividing up the work to take notes about all of the gods and some of the other minor characters. Then we'll play Jeopardy in a few weeks! 

Makerspace Redesign Reflection

I am super excited to be starting our Prairie Hill Makerspace next year. We've already ordered everything & received many items. I am eager to start playing around & letting teachers and students explore our new stuff.

Last week during the course at Grant Wood we played with Makey Makey, LittleBits, and MakeDo. I had used all of these before, at the Grant Wood Makerspace, and when they were so kind to bring their tools to our school for students to test out.

The LittleBits are my new favorite tool. I just received the 3 Student Steam Kits we ordered and me and one of my 3rd grade students put a little car together in under 5 minutes. It was really fun and so easy! 

In a couple of weeks the 4th graders are playing Jeopardy and I am hoping to use the LittleBits to make a buzzer to ring to answer the question. I am hoping to have them use sound & different colored LED lights to buzz in. I also just ordered the LittleBits Synth kit (from the Scholastic store with Scholastic dollars!!), which we could also use to make different pitches with the buzzers.

These little MakeDo tools work quite well in putting together pieces of cardboard. We could have used them the last few months while constructing cardboard Sphero mazes. I purchased a similar product, called Mr. McGroovy's box rivets, but they were a bit more complicated and harder for kids to use. My students didn't have rave reviews about the saw, but the screws work very well! 

Makey Makey is a fun tool that makes anything that conducts electricity into a computer key, which makes for some fun when playing online games. We experimented with playing Tetris, and I pulled up a drum kit I had made in Scratch and used with our MakeyMakey at school. I want to use these more during our coding club next year, since only a few kids used them this year.

Week of April 11

It felt like we had been kind of flying aimlessly the last month or so, with lots of events taking up our learning time, so it was great to get back to some serious & fun learning last week.

The kindergarten students learned all about what poetry is and looks like. We did a simple introduction using two books: I've Lost My Hippopotamus by Jack Prelutsky and Everything on It by Shel Silverstein. The kids were shocked when they saw the books, because they thought they were chapter books due to the amount of pages. We talked about how each page has a very short story called a poem on it. We also talked about how poems for kids are usually funny and that they can sometimes have a rhyme.

After we read the books, we looked at a poem called See the Bug. We highlighted words we knew in pink, then rhyming words each in a different color. We noticed that usually the rhymes come at the end of each line. I love having a Promethean board that students can come up and highlight & learn, especially in the lower grades.

First graders listened to one of our new books called Nerdy Birdy. We had a really funny conversation about what "nerd" means before reading, and had a pretty deep conversation after reading about including people even if they are different than us. It was a great book to use to talk about themes and our kids had some really great ideas to share.

Second graders learned about onomatopoeia words and we brainstormed our own while listening to some nature sound clips. We came up with some fun words for different sounds.

Third graders read some poems from a book called Rainbow Shoes. These poems are all about different colors. 

After reading, we wrote some color poems of our own. Mrs. Deiters' & Mrs. Collett's class wrote their poems on paint samples--I will post those examples once I take pictures! We have them hanging in the windows, currently. 

When we ran out paint samples for Mrs. Mehmen's and Mrs. Nove's classes, so we made our own using Google Drawings. 

Fourth graders spent a class watching the book trailers that they made. Each class has it's own Padlet with the videos which you can view on last week's post. Each student also filled out a reflection/feedback form regarding the project because I wanted some ideas of what students liked and what they didn't. It also gave them a chance to reflect on their work.

Overall, it was a great week!