November/December Update

Helllllllooooo! It's been a little while, but we've been busy, busy here in the library! We host a book fair in mid-November and I haven't had a chance to blog since we've been back from break. (My sacred Saturday morning hours that are usually for blogging have been spent in class for the last 9 weeks--this week is the final week!)

Our book fair was a huge success! We were able to profit $500 towards our storyteller who visits every grade level, as well as about $2,000 in Scholastic dollars to buy new books! The books should be here any day! Thank you to all of you who purchased books!

For the past couple of weeks preschoolers have been learning about senses. We read What Do You Do with a Tail Like This, Your Senses at the Beach, and then we used our eyes to read a wordless book called Where's Walrus?

AK students listened to Go Dog Go and Boy + Bot. Last week we played with robots called code-a-pillars after reading. 

 

Kindergartners finished up writing their pages for their class ABC books. We just need to get them bound for checkout! Last week, kindergartners started Hour of Code during computer lab, so we practiced with robots during library. We used Blue Bots, Ozobots, and Code-a-pillars. I think it's safe to say the kids loved their first experiences with robots! We will play with them again this week before moving on to something else after winter break. 

                                 

First graders have spent a couple of weeks doing robots during library along with Hour of Code during computer lab. We also read When Edgar Met Cecil and Clink, both stories about robots. 

 

Second graders are into our Mock Caldecott unit! This is one of my favorite times of the year. Each class is connected using a Google Classroom to either a class in Solon, West Liberty, or Arkadelphia, Arkansas. The first week, we talked about what the Caldecott medal is and what the criteria are for selection. We also read last years' winners that week-- Du Is Tak?, They All Saw a Cat, and Leave me Alone! 

We kicked off this year by reading When's My Birthday? and Why Am I Me? Students completed a short survey about themselves in the computer lab and we'll look at the data from many schools across the midwest to see who is participating in Mock Caldecott this year. 

Third graders have been learning about figurative language. We recently learned about idioms. Kids watched Mr. Palindrome give examples of idioms and now they have picked their favorite and are making a Google Drawing for that idiom. Hopefully we'll collect all of these into a book of idioms. 

Fourth graders have been listening to The One and Only Ivan and working on forming opinions about the use of animals in the circus. We read an article last week and talked about both sides of the issue. We also watched a video about the real Ivan and his previous owners. 

Week of October 23

We kicked off this week with another Maker Monday challenge day. 4 classes came and had Halloween themed fun!

Preschool kids listened to a book called Ghost in the House this week. It is a super cute ghost story and the kids loved it!

AK kids listened to another cute story about a ghost called Boo Who?. This is one of the new books that came in last week!

I showed some ABC books to the kindergartners this week. We read Z is for Moose together as a class. My hope was to start writing our own ABC book, but we didn't quite get that far yet. We'll see if we have time coming up!

First graders listened to Boo Who? as well, and then picked out a non-fiction book that they thought looked interesting. We looked for the title page, table of contents, glossary, and index. 

Second graders were supposed to be working on poetry, but I just couldn't resist the urge to read a creepy story. I gave each class the choice between Creepy Carrots and a new book called The X Files. Yeah, those X Files. This new kids book is seriously so amazing. So good that I actually read it to third grade as well. 

 After reading, I showed second graders the Halloween magnetic poetry Google doc. We talked about haiku patterns in poems, and wrote one together. Next week, they'll do this independently in computer lab.

Third graders were still working on questioning skills, so after we read The X Files, we talked about what questions they had after reading. We had some questions about the book, but then I asked what questions they have about real life based on the book. We had some questions about aliens. I showed the kids the website Wonderopolis and how to use it to answer questions we have. They spent some time looking up something of interest to them.

Fourth graders are still reading Ivan, and even though I had planned for more activities, we just couldn't stop reading! 

Next week, we'll watch the book fair promo video--the book fair will be November 7-10! 

Week of October 16

It was kind of a crazy week at Prairie Hill last week! I was gone on Monday at a conference called ITEC. I think this was the 11th ITEC I've attended. It was a great day, as always. I learned a few new things that I was able to bring back and implement right away, as well as getting a lot of new ideas for the future! I love attending conferences that both motivate and inspire, and this definitely did that. I ordered a book from one of the speakers, Dean Shareski, called Embracing a Culture of Joy: How Educators Can Bring Joy to Their Classrooms. He has a TED Talk about the subject, as well. I can't wait to open the book up!  

We also celebrated America Reads day on Friday! We welcomed almost 80 readers into our school! Thanks to all of you who came in and read with kids. 

Our student council reps helped welcome visitors into the building!

Our preschoolers listened to Let's Go Apple Picking and picked out another non-fiction book to check out. 

AK kids listened to I Really Like Slop which is an Elephant & Piggie story. 

Kindergarteners read Leaves Fall Down. They've been studying trees during science, so we also worked together to draw what a tree looks like in the Autumn.

First graders have been reading non-fiction and learning about how non-fiction and fiction are different. This week, students thought about whether they would like to write fiction or non-fiction if they were an author. They drew an idea in the Seesaw app and then recorded themselves talking a little bit about their story. 

Second graders started learning about poetry in their classrooms this week. In library, we read one of my favorite poems, The New Kid on the Block and had a great conversation about how what we think about someone isn't always true. Then, kids had two different centers that they went to: they listened to funny poems on poetry4kids.com or they read books of poems at a table. 

Third grade is working on the skill of asking and answering questions while reading to improve comprehension. This week, we used a Google Doc to record questions we had about a book before reading (looking at the cover & title), during reading, and after reading. I tried something new and everyone recorded their questions into the same Doc, which was a bit of a learning curve, but we got it done! The book we read together was called Mister Whistler. 

Fourth grade continued reading The One & Only Ivan and talking about theme. They worked in a small group to determine which of the major themes they've been talking about in class applied most to our story. 

A couple of the classes tried an activity that I was reminded about at ITEC called Blackout Poetry. The idea is that you take a page from a book, and circle certain words/phrases while blacking out the others to form a poem. The idea was for the kids to create a new poem from the pages either about a character or a theme of the story. 

Beginnng of October Update

October is always such a crazy month! Here's a quick update from the last two weeks:

My volunteer, Mary, and my wonderful library para, Amy, worked on getting some new Fall displays up in the windows. They are impossible to take good pictures of, but here's my attempt:

Preschool read Super Fly Guy and Ten Orange Pumpkins. They also checked out a non-fiction book for the first time. They picked an animal to read and learn more about! AK students also listened to Ten Orange Pumpkins as well as picked out a non-fiction book for the first time.

Kindergarten students listened to three of my very favorite wordless books last week: Chalk, The Typewriter, and Fossil by Bill Thomson. These books are truly magic--I mean, they have to be, to read three in a row to antsy kindergartners! 

 

This week, the kindergartners listened to a story called Aaarrgghh, Spider! and had fun screaming "aarrgghh" every time the spider appeared. After that, we followed up with a non-fiction book about spiders that made them scream, too. Ha! 

 

First graders wrote popcorn poems last week! We listed the five senses and then went through them one by one, looking, smelling, touching, tasting, and listening to the popcorn. Then, of course, they got to eat it! Here's the poem that Mrs. Huinker's class wrote:

This week, we paired a fiction and a non-fiction. We read Flood which is a wordless book and Clouds which was non-fiction. 

Second graders listened to three different versions of The Lion & the Mouse and talked about the similarities and differences between them. We talked about how the stories got passed down from long ago and how they change over time. 

 

This week we talked about the differences between fables, fairy tales, legends, and tall tales. Two of the classes read Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Three of the classes also read Anansi the Spider. The other class had read it with their teacher. We used a chart to talk about the traits of each kind of story.

 

Third grade spent another week in Biblionasium, learning how to add books to their book shelves, and write reviews & recommendations. This week, we read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, which the kids had all read before. We talked about how the main character, Vashti, changes over the course of the book. Kids recorded their ideas on a whiteboard, then we recorded ideas on the board together as a class. 

Fourth grade has continued reading The One & Only Ivan. (*spoiler alert ahead*) We're going to read for one more week, then they'll read/listen to the rest during reading rotations in their classroom during literacy block. Last week, we focused on Stella, one of the main characters. We looked at some of her quotes from the book, and determined character traits based on those quotations. This past week, we read the part where Stella dies, and I choked back tears, like I do every time I read this...which I'm probably on my 30th or so reading. Whew, its tough. But, one of the things that makes this book so perfect is that you really get to know the characters, and we're working on building empathy.