Gobble, Gobble

Another Thanksgiving-themed week in the library...

Thank You, Sarah, is a nonfiction book by Laurie Halse Anderson that tells the story of Sarah Hale, the woman credited with getting Thanksgiving to be recognized as a national holiday. I am always drawn to nonfiction books that a) tell a good story and b) highlight something I previously knew nothing about and this book delivers on both counts. In fact, I got quite a bit of mileage out of this book this week, using it in some capacity for 2nd, 4th and 5th grades!

Kindergarten and 1st grade once again shared the same read aloud, A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting (glad I have this blog to refer to, so I don't repeat next year!), but with different post-story activities. If you haven't read this one, it has a surprise ending, so it's a great story to use for practicing prediction. We began the read aloud and then I stopped the story about 2/3 of the way through (before the surprise is revealed). 1st graders divided into groups and drew on chart paper what they predicted was going to happen next. We shared our predictions and then finished the story. Kindergarten students had a more straightforward activity sheet, where they drew a picture of something surprising that might happen at their house.

This group's drawing included so many details from the text - yay for paying attention!

Global Read Aloud Collaboration

I've alluded to the 4th Global Read Aloud postcard project over the past couple of weeks so now that we finished our postcards, I thought it deserved its own post.

The Global Read Aloud is a program our 4th grades participated in this fall where they read a book as a class and shared their experience with the book with other classrooms across the world. Using Padlet, they were able to connect with each other and share thoughts about the book. 

Separately, I had attended a webinar on Britannica School and as part of the webinar, we were asked to create a lesson using Britannica. One feature I really liked in Britannica was the World Atlas, so the 4th grade teachers helped me make a connection with the GRA and the postcard idea was born. 

Each class created a postcard to share with their GRA schools, using photos from interesting places in Boston. It was a great learning experience for both them and me! Although it ended up taking me a little longer than I thought it would, the postcards did finally come together. 

Without further adieu...

Postcard #1

Postcard #2

November is for...

Veterans and Turkeys!

Looking ahead to the rest of the month, both November holidays gave me inspiration for my lessons this week.

As I was putting up my Thanksgiving book display (who knew we had so many picture books about Thanksgiving?!?), I came across some new-to-me books as well as some old favorites to share with students this week.

Kindergarten and 1st grade both heard Arthur's Thanksgiving, a classic by Marc Brown. With kindergartners, we continued using the 5 W's to better understand the elements of the story. 1st graders practiced sequencing by drawing a picture of something that happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story.

2nd grade dove into their first genre: Mystery. I recycled the genre dudes from last week and we brainstormed the elements of the mystery genre to watch out for in our read aloud this week. I found an unknown-to-me Jane Yolen book, Piggins, which was a great story to illustrate the elements of the genre, including identifying witnesses, suspects and detectives and noting which clues were important to figuring out the mystery.

3rd grade diverged from genres to do an activity around a favorite Veterans Day book of mine, Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine and a Miracle. We heard the story, and then used the iPads and Brittanica school to learn some facts about Iraq and Jordan, 2 of the countries Nubs visited on his journey to America.

4th grade continued to make progress on their postcards for their Global Read Aloud schools.

I loved one of the new-to-me books so much, that I added an additional week of thick/thin questions to my 5th grade lessons this week so that I could take advantage of reading this book. Balloons Over Broadway tells the story of Tony Sarg, the puppeteer behind the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We continued with thick/thin questioning about the book and segued to thinking up thick questions to guide our research.

Two Weeks for the Price of One...

Life is busy! I just sat down to blog about the PD I attended today and realized I am 2 weeks behind with my weekly updates. So, first things first!

Week of October 25

For the most part, we stuck with the silly/scary theme of last week.

I took a page from last week's 1st grade success stories, and did a repeat for my Kindergartners - The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. This one is definitely a classic for a reason - so much fun and one to keep in my repertoire for next year.

1st grade heard The Perfect Pumpkin Pie by Denys Cazet. I brought in a little STEAM by creating a class graph of their favorite kinds of pie. The finished product came out pretty cute, and the kids were pretty engaged with helping plot out their index cards.

Apple the big winner!