Week of September 19

We celebrated homecoming this week! It's always a fun week for teachers and kids. We still tried to keep learning in the library, though. Here's what went down...

Our preschoolers read Little Green Peas by Keith Baker. The kids had fun naming the colors and telling their favorite colors!

Our morning AK students listened to A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems. I love Elephant & Piggie, and the kids did too! The afternoon AKers came in to check out only, since the parade was Friday afternoon.

Our Kindergarteners are practicing using the illustrations to tell a story, so we are going to spend a couple of weeks reading wordless picture books. This is quite possibly my favorite thing to read with kindergarteners...or anyone, for that matter! This week we started with 2 books from Bill Thomson, The Typewriter and Fossil. 

                     

Our first graders checked out their HAWK readers for the first time, so we had to practice some procedures. HAWK readers are leveled texts that the students take home every night to practice their reading at home. They did this in kindergarten, as well, so they were ready to get started! These kids are also practicing numbers up through 100, so we read a book about counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's called Zero, Zilch, Nada: Counting to None by Wendy Ulmer.

The second graders are practicing identifying and summarizing the beginning, middle, and end of a story. To do this, we read the fable The Hare & the Tortoise. Then, we talked about the BME, and finally students used our Ozobot robots to retell the race. The first day, the kids tried to draw the whole thing based on my model, and it didn't work very well. The robots have to have pretty neat lines and codes to follow. I thought it might be better if I drew them out, then kids pieced them together like a puzzle, but that didn't work as well, either. Finally by the third day, I made a template for the kids to use and fill out. That worked much better, and we had some successes! It's always a learning process for me, as well. Hopefully we're able to try again next week, so everyone can succeed, now that I've figured out how to teach it!

Third graders are learning how to write a personal narrative, so we used this week to talk about the traits of a personal narrative. Then, we read Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña and talked about which traits of a personal narrative it had. Next week, students will work in groups to read another book and find the elements of a personal narrative.

Fourth graders took a week off from Bloxels, and learned how to log in to our Kidblog where they will write about their independent reading books. I can't wait to see their posts, and I am excited to post what I've been reading about too!

Week of September 12

This week our AK students read Tiptop Cat. After that, they checked out two books. I love seeing these kids & they love coming to library!

Our kindergarten classes either read LMNOPeas or Click Clack, Quackity Quack. Obviously these little boys and girls are practicing their alphabet and letters! After reading, they got their first chance of the year to use our Promethean board. We practiced matching up lower case letters with upper case letters. The mama kangaroos had a capital letter and the joeys had a lower case letter. Also, I was surprised that at least one student in all 4 classes knew that a baby kangaroo is called a joey!

First graders focused on text-to-world connections this week. I decided to use one of my very favorite books: The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. This story amazes me every single time. Many students had heard the story, but not many knew that it was true. It was very easy to make connections with tight rope walkers in circuses, with the twin towers in NYC, and with the real-life Philippe Petit. I showed them some pictures and they were in awe!

Second graders practiced using Destiny Quest on the iPads to locate a given picture book and chapter book in our library. Usually I don't teach this skill until the end of 2nd grade, but these kids rocked it! They are amazing! I used a screencast to teach them, then they worked with a partner to locate the books.

              

Third graders have a boring update, as they are still working on searching for and checking out books in their Lexile level. We'll move on to something more fun next week, I promise! 

Fourth graders continued working in Bloxels. This week, we reread the book we read last week, and talked about the background, foreground, and middle ground in the setting. In Bloxels, we built the things that would be in the middle ground of our game. Next week we'll work on the background, and the following week we'll do the foreground and our game will be finished! I seriously love Bloxels! 

Week of September 3: Bloxels, Connections, Football

This week was a fast week, with no school Monday or Tuesday. After all the excitement last week, this week was a little less crazy. A little...

Our AK students listened to a story about football on Friday called Fall Ball. Many of them were excited for the Iowa/Iowa State game this weekend.

Kindergarteners listened to a book called Puppy!. It is a cute story about a cave boy who finds a "puppy" and brings him home.

First graders listened to two stories, both about imaginary friends, and practiced making to text-to-text connections about them. 

 

Second graders learned about all of the different genres that we use to classify books. We also talked about genres are used to classify movies and music. We are working towards using the library catalog to find books. Laying the foundation for our genres is important to knowing how our library works. 

Third graders practiced searching for library books according to Lexile. This will help them find a good fit book to have in their classroom during read-to-self time. Here's a quick video I made last year to teach them how to do it!



Finally, our 4th grade students started working with Bloxels. Their current skill focus is on characters, settings, and events, so each class read a short picture book and we are going to turn those books into video games. In the video game, the character will have to move through the setting and happen upon the events in the book. It isn't going to be a perfect science, because finding the perfect book was hard, but I think it'll be a fun way to reinforce the skill. Here are the books we read:

  

 

This week, we focused primarily on the main character. The students watch a quick video tutorial I made, and then built their character in Bloxels. (PS, did you know you can record your iPad screen using QuickTime on your Mac?! Mind=blown!)

              

Week of August 29: Breakout, Scavenger Hunts, Read Alouds

This week was our first official week of library lessons, and we had so much fun! We also checked out over 3,000 books in the first 9 days...whoa!

I decided to try something new with 4th graders this year as a library intro. I knew I wanted students to do something similar to a BreakoutEDU, but with a little twist. Instead, I thought of what could happen if the librarians were locked in the library, and that's where the inspiration started. 

                                                      

This is what students saw when they walked into the library. They also saw Tammy go running out. The concept was that Tammy had locked us into the library so that we would quit bothering her in the office. We made a video from Tammy that we showed the kids.

She conveniently left the clues in my pocket, and I was able to get the students organized into their groups that I had setup the night before. To find the first clue they had to use their blacklight to read the message. The clues led them to 2 different new sections in the library, and had them practice using the library search to find 2 different books. They had to turn in the books to Tammy and then she gave them one number of the code to release us.

Everyone had so much fun doing this--the kids and adults! I thought some of the excitement would wear off by Friday since the kids were talking to the other classes, but everyone enjoyed it! And there weren't any spoilers about the code!

Third graders did a scavenger hunt that is more similar to what we've done in the past. They had to use the blacklight pen, and follow a QR code trail, but this time, as kids came in to put return books on the cart they realized the cart was missing. Then we soon found that the computer mice and scanners were also missing! They had to follow the clues to figure out who stole our library stuff! They really enjoyed this, and thankfully, we got all of our things back.

The clues led students to new sections/areas in our library, as well as to find some book series. The final clue showed a picture of someone using our library things, so the kids left the room to go get them back.

Clearly, I have amazing coworkers who help me pull off things like this!

The 2nd graders practiced using the 5 finger rule to find just right books. We reviewed the 5 finger test, practiced together, then students worked independently to find a book that is just right for them.

Putting books into kids' hands just makes us so excited!

Our first graders listened to a story called Cooking with Henry & Elliebelly and practiced making text-to-self connections. We've been taking a little extra time for checkout because it just takes longer at the beginning of the year. Its always fun to get pictures of kids reading together after checking out!

And our kindergarteners have now all been to the library to check out and listen to the story A Perfectly Messed Up Story. This story has great reminders of how to take care of library books, plus it's super funny! Kindergarteners have been checking out one picture book and one non-fiction book so far. 

Is there anything cuter than kindergarteners reading together?!