Week of December 12

Monday kicked off with our 2nd graders have two Skype sessions! The first was with author/illustrator Lisa Brown. Lisa wrote & illustrated The Airport Book, which was one of our selections for Mock Caldecott. She showed us her studio and drew us a picture of a cat!

Our 2nd call was with Dan Santat....that's right, Caldecott WINNING illustrator Dan Santat. Dan won the Caldecott for The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend back in 2015. He has also illustrated the Ricky Ricotta robot series which is a favorite at Prairie Hill. His current book Are We There Yet? is one of our Mock Caldecott books this year!

Our kindergarten, first, and third grade students got to have their first experiences with Dash this year. Dash is my favorite robot, and I think is the kids' favorite too! He is so versatile! I love that Dash is equally interesting to kindergarteners and third graders. The selection of apps that Wonder Workshop has put out makes coding accessible to our kindergarteners, and challenges our third graders. 

Kindergarten and first graders used the app called Path. Path has students draw a path for Dash to drive, and has them insert simple code buttons. It starts with having Dash makes sounds, and students level up to more complex buttons. Our kids loved it!

3rd graders used some of Dash's attachments: his launcher and the xylophone. It was fun to see how creative they got! 3rd graders used an app called Blockly, which uses block code. The codes are text based, but drag and drop, so it is scaffolded up from the K/1 students using pictures. They had so much fun--apparently so much fun that I don't have any pictures! 

4th graders wrapped up their states projects--our states wax museum is tomorrow afternoon! I can't wait to see all of the hard work that they've done in class, library, computer lab, and art all come together! They have worked really hard!

Next week is our last week before break, so we'll hand out BRAG books to each student & have some fun! For those that don't know, BRAG books stands for Books and Reading Are Great. It is a program that gives each & every student a free book right before winter break and again before summer break. It is our gift to students and is one of my favorite times of year! Libraries exist to provide access to books, which we know that all students don't have at home. This program means that students receive 8 free books from kindergarten through 4th grade. Preschoolers & AK students also get a book. A huge thanks to our PTO for sponsoring this every year!

Week of December 5

Here is our current window display--stockings for some of our favorite book characters!

Here are the robot books we've been reading. Our Kindergarten & 1st graders have enjoyed all 3 of these books! This week they used the same Bluebot & Ozobot robots that we played with last week. 

Our 3rd graders played with Dash this week after reading a few more chapters of House of Robots by James Patterson. Next week we'll get out Dash's launcher & xylophone attachments. 

2nd graders read these two books as part of our Mock Caldecott project.

Our 2nd graders have also been lucky enough to get to use our makerspace during indoor recess. The favorites are Snap Circuits, Little Bits, LaserPegs, and Ozobots. It's so fun to see their creativity!

And We're Back!

After a month hiatus from blogging, due to our Scholastic Book Fair and Thanksgiving break, we're back! The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is one of those times where the days seem long but the time actually goes so fast. Since next week is Computer Science Education Week and Hour of Code, we decided to hit coding in the library and in the computer lab for grades K, 1, and 3. 2nd and 4th graders will do coding sometime in January or February, as they are both in the middle of projects right now. In the computer lab, students are playing coding games at code.org and in the library, we're of course learning with robots.

The kindergartners listened to one of my very favorite stories, Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman. Kids always love this simple story of friendship.

After reading, we used Bluebot & Ozobot. I created some mats for Bluebot with numbered spaces to get him to go to. We talked about thinking one step at a time to make him go forward, backward, and turn. With Ozobots, I let them play with markers and huge sheets of butcher paper. Here's a few photos, and here's a link to an album with plenty more pictures!

First graders did the same activities, except we read a book called Cookiebot by Katie Van Camp. Who doesn't love a great adventure that ends with cookies raining down from the sky?

Again, here are a few photos, and here's the link to a bunch more!

Second graders kicked our week off on Monday morning, Skyping with author/illustrator Salina Yoon. She was absolutely amazing, telling us about many of her books, and talking about how she gets many of her ideas from toys! She also read to us her book Be a Friend, which is one of our Mock Caldecott selections. Our friends from Council Bluffs and Arkansas were also in the conversation with us! It was the best way to start our week!

In class this week, we read two more books from our Mock Caldecott list: It is Not Time for Sleeping by Lisa Graff, and Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley. Both books were illustrated by Lauren Castillo. In the computer lab, they logged in to Google Classroom and commented about which book they liked the best. They also used Google Drawings to draw something they'd rather do than go to bed at night. I absolutely love this project and all that it allows our students!

Third graders started reading the book House of Robots by James Patterson. We will read a few chapters each week. After reading, we played robots--of course! Third graders also played with Beebots & Ozobots this week. I showed them some of the color code combinations for the Ozobots, to add to just drawing lines. I love the versatility of the Ozobots! Here's the link to all the photos.

Fourth graders worked on moving their notes about states from our Google Read & Write highlights documents into their state slideshows. This new tool makes it so easy to organize notes. After highlighting important info, students summarize it into their own words, and then they can copy/paste into their slideshow! Next week we'll work on citing sources and adding photos.