Week of April 17

This week our kindergarteners listened to some nursery rhymes from the flip nursery rhyme series. Each book has the original nursery rhyme, plus the same story from a different perspective. The kids thought they were hilarious! We also read a handful of poems from

Our first graders listened to the poem called Sick by Shel Silverstein. We then listed things that might make us say "ouch" and wrote our own list poems about them! This idea came from Nancy VandenBerge over at her blog First Grade Wow.

Our second graders have been working on opinion writing during class, which ties right in writing a book review. We read the book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers and each student gave it a star ranking, similar to the star rankings on Goodreads, which is what I use to record what I read. Kids had to state why they liked or didn't like the book.

Our 3rd graders are working on using context clues to determine word meanings. First, we talked about how many words they think they know, and how we learn new words. I found a handful of poems that had some tricky vocabulary words in them. I took pictures of them and recorded myself reading them and put them into a slideshow shared with students. For each one, I gave a multiple choice answer bank. The correct answers for all of the questions formed the answer for a riddle at the end. Kids did a great job working on these independently or with a partner. They didn't have enough time to finish, so we finished as a whole group and eventually solved the riddle!

Fourth graders are beginning a study of Greek mythology during library for the last few weeks of school. To kick things off, we did a Breakout EDU box to learn the story of Pandora's Box. This was the first time I had created my own Breakout, and I was a little nervous about it! It took several hours to plan out, but planning was really fun. This is my visual planning sheet.

Students came in, and we read part of the story of Pandora. I skipped the beginning, for the sake of time, and skipped the ending. Students were told that the last thing that was in Pandora's box knocking was now in our Breakout box. All of the clues that they needed to solve the 5 locks were on the table. Many of the clues really challenged our kids. They had to do some research, use our library search, and use the index of a book. About half of them had never done a breakout box before, but almost all of them said they really enjoyed it!

Once they got the box open, they saw that HOPE is what was left in Pandora's box. In the story, hope is the remedy for all of the evil things that came out of the box the first time she opened it. As a reflection, students wrote about something that gives them hope, what hope means to them, or something they hope for. I loved reading their reflections--such deep thoughts for 4th graders.

                                     

Dr. Seuss Bracket!

The last two years we have had pretty epic Dr. Seuss celebrations, where every class comes in on one day and listens to a book, plus has a Seuss themed snack and a fun photo booth. Because of our book fair and conferences this year, we weren't able to do it all in one day. So, I thought we'd just spend the whole month celebrating Seuss, instead!

March is also the month of basketball, for those of us who love March Madness, so we combined the two to create an 8 book Dr. Seuss book bracket. At my previous building, I did a 16 book bracket, but because of time, we did 8 this year.

The kindergarteners and first graders, as well as half of our second graders voted for the left side of the bracket, while the other half of second grade, plus our third and fourth graders voted on the right side. 

We displayed all of our Dr. Seuss books for checkout throughout the month!

The first week, each class read the two books in their section of the bracket. After that, we read one book each week. I bought all of the Dr. Seuss books on my iPad so that I could project them onto the board for kids to see. Then, I created a Google Form for kids to vote on each matchup. They used iPads to vote.

This is what our bracket ended up like. The Lorax won by a big margin!

I keep a document of book quotes as I read, and the last week of our tournament, I pulled out a Dr. Seuss quote from The Lorax. This is one of the best!

During the last week, we also had several Dr. Seuss themed games to play! It is safe to say that everyone had a lot of fun!

Week of February 13

This week felt very much like a week of simplicity and joy in the library. We focused on books and reading and laughing--a perfect combo!

Even our recess clubs were back to the basics this week--we played with Legos and K'NEX! We...and I mean WE (I had to get in on this!) had fun building houses and cars and other creations.

Our preschoolers read their first wordless book this week--my favorite one, Chalk by Bill Thomson. 

AK kids listened to Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee. They all wanted to share their experiences with roller coasters and their reactions to this book were so funny!

Kindergarteners listened to Duck, Duck, Moose by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. We used this to talk about characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end. I created an organizer to retell the story. Kids dragged pictures out of the "magic box" and sorted them out.

First graders listened to two more of the books from the Goldfinch list: The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires and Lion vs Rabbit by Alex Latimer. 

Second and third grade classes both listened to my new favorite book, The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey. It is just so funny, and totally worth the $4 I spent to have it on Kindle so that I could project the pictures for the kids. I read it out loud 8 times and I still laughed at certain parts! I also talked with our Scholastic book fair rep, and she told me that they'll be sending book 2 of The Bad Guys to our fair next week! 

About half of our 4th graders finished up their book trailers! As soon as I get the rest of them, I'm going to find a way to post them all on a page and share them. For their first video project, they are turning out really well!

The next two weeks will be consumed by book fair, so there won't be a regular post, but look for a post with the 4th grade videos, and a new regular post the week before Spring Break--March 11! We're going to start a Dr. Seuss tournament of books, and I can't wait! 

Week of February 6

Our recess clubs this week had fun making short stop motion videos! We used an iPad app called Stomo to create them. It is a pretty simple tool, but doesn't allow some of the features that the Hue Animation Studio software that we have does. Since recess is such a short time, simple was good! And, it's something that kids can do with just a camera and some simple video editing software. Here is what they came up with:

Preschoolers listened to a story called Opposnakes by Salina Yoon. It is a funny book of snakes who have opposites, so we talked about what the word opposite means. Kids had fun guessing what was going to come next!

AK students listened to the story called Leave Me Alone! that kindergarteners listened to a couple of weeks ago. The story is so funny!

Kindergarteners listened to a book called Mitchell Goes Bowling by Hallie Durand. After reading, they worked in a group of 3 to draw the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

First grade listened to two more stories from the Iowa Goldfinch Award list: Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and Splat the Cat and the Cool School Trip by Rob Scotton. 

    

Second graders listened to the first few chapters of a chapter book: either Back to School, Mallory by Laurie B Friedman, Stink & the Shark Sleepover by Megan Macdonald, or The Chicken Squad by Doreen Cronin. We are also talking about which books fit into which genres, and how sometimes books could go into multiple genres. 

                     

                  

Third graders finished finding facts for their slideshows. They each had a slide about their famous persons childhood, their career, their accomplishments, and some fun facts, as well as a bibliography. 

We had a few fourth graders finish up their book trailers, but had some sound issues that we'll need to correct. They are turned out really well and I can't wait to share the final products!