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.

Week of September 25

Another great week is in the books at Prairie Hill!

I added Max to our character wall after being inspired by reading Where the Wild Things Are a few weeks back.

Spent some time after school reading my childhood favorite, A Fly Went By. Of course we have it at Prairie Hill!

Our preschoolers listened to You Are (Not) Small by Anna Kang.

AK students have library on Friday, and I completely lost my voice on Thursday, so they watched Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom and Chicka, Chicka, 123 on Bookflix. Bookflix helped save my day!

Kindergartners started looking at wordless books this week. They are working on using the pictures to tell the story of a book, so wordless books are perfect for that! It's one of my favorite things to do with the kindies. This week, we started with Where's Walrus and Where's Walrus? And Penguin?) by Steven Savage. These books are a perfect start to wordless books because they're so simple yet entirely engaging and have a clear storyline. The end of Walrus & Penguin gets kids laughing every time!

First graders are working on recognizing words and phrases in poems that appeal to the five senses. We started by reading a poem about the five senses. Then, we looked at a poem and highlighted words that related to the senses. 

Second graders listened to The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat and Horrible Bear by Ame Dyckman. They also watched book trailers for some chapter book series that we have in the library. 

 

Third graders logged into Biblionasium for the first time. Next week, I'll show them how to log their reading and keep track of what they want to read!

Fourths continued listening to The One & Only Ivan. They love having Primos come in to hang out while listening. 

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!