Week of October 17

Another fun week has gone by! We finished the week off on Friday with America Reads day. A huge thank you to anyone who came in and volunteered to read to a classroom! Our students truly love it, and so do our teachers. What's better than a day full of reading, anyway!?

Our student leadership council students greeted for the first 20 minutes of America Reads Day!

This week our kindergarteners continued in our Global Read Aloud author/illustrator study of Lauren Castillo. This week, the book we read was called The Reader. It is written by Amy Hest, but illustrated by Lauren Castillo. Mrs. Hoeger & Miss Blake's classes got to Skype with other classes and read the book together. Mrs. Younger's class wrote an email back to our partner classroom in Canada. And because of field trips, Mrs. Hilgenkamp's class will catch up next week. I truly love this project, and I was lucky enough last week to get to meet Pernille Ripp, the creator of this project.

Mrs. Hoeger's class Skyped with a class from South Carolina.

Miss Blake's class Skyped with a class from Ohio!

Myself & Pernille Ripp, creator of GRA. Thankful ITEC brought her in!

First graders started practicing the strategy of visualization this week. I used a poem called "My Neighbor's Dog is Purple" by Jack Prelutsky and had students visualize before reading, during reading, and after reading. 

Second graders watched book trailers for some chapter books that appeal to their age and reading levels. I have a YouTube playlist that I've started that I just keep adding to. It's such an easy way to promote a bunch of books quickly.

           

Third grade students wrapped up the inferencing activity that we started last week. They had read a wordless picture book and recorded their inferences made using the illustrations. This week, students found a page from their book and shared it with the class, asking the class to make an inference about their page. They also got to talk through my microphone if they wanted to, which was a super big deal to them! Whatever it takes!

Fourth graders finished up their Bloxels picture book retells. As with the first time kids (and their teacher) do something, some turn out well and some get lost, and who knows what else. We do have a few games shared to the Bloxels site, but it is hard to share them from there. If you go here and then warp to 418, 86 on the grid, then you'll see Ayumi & Ella's, and if you warp to 419, 86 you'll see another example. 

Next week we have a short week, so we'll be doing some Makerspace activities and then the week of Halloween we'll jump back in to lessons!