Caldecott Time

Lessons for the next few weeks will center on the upcoming Caldecott Awards, with a slightly different twist for each grade level. 

To start, I built a new display with all Caldecott Winners and Honor books - we have a lot of them! It's pretty cool to see all the different authors and illustrators who have won over the years, although, I think the competition is much tougher in modern times. I love seeing how books on display fly off the shelves - it gives me motivation to keep coming up with new ideas to showcase different types of books. 

Preview of the books we are reading this week: 

Calling All Artists!

In addition to our regular library lessons last week, I also introduced the MSLA's (MA School Library Association) annual bookmark contest.

The MSLA made it really easy - I showed this quick video made by students at Dartmouth Middle School and shared a short slide deck I prepared with the high-level details of the contest.

There was SO much enthusiasm across all grades - I can't wait to see all the entries that come in.

If any kiddos need more information, the contest website is here. The entry form and past winners can all be found on this site.

All entries do need to be signed by a parent or guardian and returned to me by Monday, February 12. 

MLK for all ages

This week's library lessons for the most part focused on honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I used a different book for each grade as a jumping off point and did a variety of different activities for each.

Kindergarteners were the one outlier. Two K teachers came in to check out books about MLK, so I decided to switch up my focus this week. I'm starting Caldecotts with most grades next week so I started a week early with K and read a wordless Caldecott winner, A Ball for Daisy. This is a really cute book, and they did a great job helping tell the story.

1st grade heard My Brother Martin, written by his sister and shares stories and memories that not everyone knows about him. To introduce this idea, I shared a little memory box of some things that only my close family and friends would know which I think worked to get them to know me a little better.

In 2nd grade, we read Martin's Big Words. Before reading the book, I introduced the KWL chart and we filled out what we knew about MLK and what we wanted to know (cutest 2nd grade question: Who were his friends?). This book is unique in that it features snippets of some of his speeches, so I had students take turns reading the quotes that were sprinkled throughout the text. Following the book, we finished our chart by logging anything new that we learned about MLK.

3rd grade read A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. While pretty basic, it is a good book to use to work on sequencing. So, we read it through first and then each student received a page of the book and we created a human timeline of MLK"s life. All in all, it worked pretty well and was a nice way to mix up some of the activities we've been in 3rd grade over the past several weeks.

4th grade will be working on their US State research projects soon, so I have been looking for ways to preview some of the research tools they'll have available to them. This week, I created a few stations for students to travel to, giving them a chance to practice their Destiny and Britannica skills.

5th grade continued to make progress on their Passion Projects. I think some students will be ready to present in a few weeks - exciting stuff!

Wrapping up December

Holiday hecticness got me like whoa in December, so another two-fer update!

Kindergarten continued the gingerbread theme. I was truly amazed at how many versions of this story exist! We read Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Boy and used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the 3 versions of the story that we read. They really loved these stories. I'll definitely stick with this as a theme next year, but maybe come up with some more creative extension activities.

My vision for 1st grade was to have them use their newly honed nonfiction skills to help me create a fact wall about winter. We read Secret Life of a Snowflake and Snowflake Bentley aloud and I pulled all the winter nonfiction books we had in the library. I found some cute outlines of snowflakes and snowmen, and hoped they would use the winter books to write a fact and decorate their shape. Most of them just wanted to color...so I went with it. Finished product below.

"Snow is..." Window Decor

2nd grade finished up genres with a rousing game of Genre Jeopardy! which went well - not sure what it is about this game, but it is typically a crowd pleaser. More importantly, they all showed that they have been paying attention over the last few weeks and nailed the questions! The last week before break, I reprised my "fill-in-the-blank" story activity from October. It was actually kind of difficult to find interesting one-page stories, so I adapted Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells, and Jingle Bell Rock instead. No complaints from these guys.

3rd grade finished up our folktale research chart and read one of my favorite legends, Greyling by Jane Yolen. The week before break, we read a multi-traditional story, Trees of the Dancing Goats, by Patricia Polacco and also did the fill-in-the-blank song activities.

4th grade did a final Author's Purpose activity - using the newspaper to find examples of Persuasive, Informative and Entertaining writing. Overall, I liked this activity but only one of the 6 groups really pulled their poster together like I had envisioned. How I organized the groups and introduce the activity will definitely change for next year - but I love that I have an example to share - I think that will help a lot. The week before vacation we read The Marvelous Thing that Came from a Spring and did some research into other accidental inventions. This was a great book that the kids really liked, but the activity fell a little flat. 

Author's Purpose Newspaper Activity

5th grade focused on research and citations. In preparation for their upcoming Explorer unit in Social Studies, we reviewed what belongs in a citation for both a book and a website, and they continued their research for their Passion Projects. It has been interesting to figure out what they know from previous years - I started off asking for information about Citations and they looked at me with complete blank stares. Once I said Bibliography, I got flickers of recognition!