Week of September 18

We kicked off this week with two #makermonday challenges. One with Ms. Howe's first graders, and one with Ms. Blake's kindergartners. The firsties read a book called If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen and then used materials to build their own house.

The kindies have been learning nursery rhymes, so we read Humpty Dumpty and tried to build a wall that he could sit on without falling off. We used hard boiled eggs to test our walls. If he didn't stay, then kids made changes and tried again. 

This week our preschoolers listened to Oops, Pounce, Quick, Run and checked out a book.

The AK kids listened to Dot by Patricia Intriago. In the book, the dot takes many different forms. Students colored their own dot, which was actually designed for the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. This dot is made by Quiver, which is an app that turns the dots into augmented reality dots. The kids had fun scanning their dots after drawing them!

Kindergartners listened to Monkey & Duck Quack Up by Jennifer Hamburg. In the book, the monkey is trying to get the duck to rhyme with him so that they can win the rhyming contest. However, duck just keeps quacking! 

First graders read Water is Water by Miranda Paul and used it to practice making text-to-self, text, and world connections. 

Second graders wrapped up beginning, middle, and end by reading Me Want Pet by Tammi Sauer. The kids really liked this cute story, probably because of the cave boy voice it uses. After reading, we sorted out the BME & characters and setting using our Promethean board. 

Third graders used the app Skitch on the iPads to annotate poems. They were looking for stanzas, rhymes, and repetitions. They worked with a partner or by themselves and selected a poem of their choice out of our selection of poetry books. 

Fourth graders continued reading The One & Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. I haven't tackled reading a chapter book with an entire grade for a long time, but this one just seems important right now. First, the characters and setting are so clear in this book. Applegate does an amazing job of helping us get to know them. Fourth grade is currently working on character traits. I also think that this book yields a lot of empathy for the characters, because we get to know them so well. I wanted to infuse teaching story structure along with empathy, and this book is the perfect one. So far, kids are very engaged. 

Here's our finished Ivan display in the hallway. Our library volunteer did an amazing job putting it together! There are facts about the real Ivan displayed around him. Hopefully we will be adding a few things this week!