Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Library Lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Library Lessons. Show all posts
Monday, June 11, 2018
Trailer time!
I always have such high expectations for multi-week projects - if my students and I have invested several weeks in something, I want it to reflect that! I think their trailers came out pretty well. I loved seeing the books that they chose and watching how they portrayed the elements of the story. It doesn't hurt that the iMovie package makes them look so professional!
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Every Day is Earth Day
With April vacation, it seemed like a natural break to pick up with something new, rather than continue with poetry (plus, you know, my aforementioned confession).
So, Earth Day being this week made for a natural tie-in for my lessons this week.
Kindergarteners heard a book that was recommended by local public librarian, Call Me Tree. It was short but incorporated movement while the main character (and my classes) showed off their best tree poses. We also capped off National Poetry Month with a 2 part poem from a sweet spring-themed poetry book. I needed the rest of the class to finish up our special poetry project...
1st graders heard Emeraldalicious by Victoria Kann. We talked about some of the wishes that Peter and his sister asked for and then they each had to write their own wish for the world. They put them in my repurposed wish jar (who actually uses a cookie jar, anyway?) and we took turns reading different wishes while we waited in line at the end of class. It was a pretty cute lesson - great for the first class back after vacation.
2nd grade heard The People Who Hugged the Trees, adapted by Deborah Lee Rose. We did some reading of the cover to predict some details about the story. Someone nailed that it was a story from India. This is a beautifully illustrated story, and its history as a folk tale tied back to some of the genre work we did earlier in the year.
3rd grade started a unit on Reference books. First up was dictionaries, but done in conjunction with the Earth Day-friendly story Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter. I pulled out 6 words from the story for them to look up in the dictionaries (either alone or with partners). They were responsible for the definition and the part of speech, which seemed doable to me, but the 1st class I had were only able to make it through about half the list. I adapted for the next class and had them work in groups of 5 so that they could hopefully move more quickly through the list. It seemed to work much better, so I'll file that away for next year.
Again, 4th and 5th grade marching to the beat of their own drummer (book trailers and biographies, respectively). Full update still to come!
So, Earth Day being this week made for a natural tie-in for my lessons this week.
Kindergarteners heard a book that was recommended by local public librarian, Call Me Tree. It was short but incorporated movement while the main character (and my classes) showed off their best tree poses. We also capped off National Poetry Month with a 2 part poem from a sweet spring-themed poetry book. I needed the rest of the class to finish up our special poetry project...
1st graders heard Emeraldalicious by Victoria Kann. We talked about some of the wishes that Peter and his sister asked for and then they each had to write their own wish for the world. They put them in my repurposed wish jar (who actually uses a cookie jar, anyway?) and we took turns reading different wishes while we waited in line at the end of class. It was a pretty cute lesson - great for the first class back after vacation.
2nd grade heard The People Who Hugged the Trees, adapted by Deborah Lee Rose. We did some reading of the cover to predict some details about the story. Someone nailed that it was a story from India. This is a beautifully illustrated story, and its history as a folk tale tied back to some of the genre work we did earlier in the year.
3rd grade started a unit on Reference books. First up was dictionaries, but done in conjunction with the Earth Day-friendly story Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter. I pulled out 6 words from the story for them to look up in the dictionaries (either alone or with partners). They were responsible for the definition and the part of speech, which seemed doable to me, but the 1st class I had were only able to make it through about half the list. I adapted for the next class and had them work in groups of 5 so that they could hopefully move more quickly through the list. It seemed to work much better, so I'll file that away for next year.
Again, 4th and 5th grade marching to the beat of their own drummer (book trailers and biographies, respectively). Full update still to come!
Monday, April 23, 2018
Librarian Confessions
Here goes...I don't particularly like poetry.
(My other one is that I've never read any of the Harry Potters, though I hope to change that this summer!).
But, April is National Poetry Month and it makes a natural connection to spend a few weeks focusing on poetry so I had to try extra hard to not feel like I was a complete faker.
In retrospect, I think I had more hits than misses. First the hits:
Kindergarten - This one is a work in progress (stay tuned for the final product), but I think it's going to be a hit. I made some cards with Rhyme and Repetition and we talked about how these are sometimes seen in poetry. As we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, they raised their card when they heard either rhyming or repeating words. Our extension activity uses knowledge I got from the recent MSLA (Mass School Library Association) conference I attended and I can't wait to wrap it up this week.
3rd grade - I tried Spine Label poetry with these guys for the first time and it was so fun. Definitely a hit! Some of them struggled, but others really embraced it and kept going back to make more of them. A few of my favorites below:
(My other one is that I've never read any of the Harry Potters, though I hope to change that this summer!).
But, April is National Poetry Month and it makes a natural connection to spend a few weeks focusing on poetry so I had to try extra hard to not feel like I was a complete faker.
In retrospect, I think I had more hits than misses. First the hits:
Kindergarten - This one is a work in progress (stay tuned for the final product), but I think it's going to be a hit. I made some cards with Rhyme and Repetition and we talked about how these are sometimes seen in poetry. As we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, they raised their card when they heard either rhyming or repeating words. Our extension activity uses knowledge I got from the recent MSLA (Mass School Library Association) conference I attended and I can't wait to wrap it up this week.
3rd grade - I tried Spine Label poetry with these guys for the first time and it was so fun. Definitely a hit! Some of them struggled, but others really embraced it and kept going back to make more of them. A few of my favorites below:
The next week, we talked about different rhyme schemes and practiced identifying them in some funny Prelutsky poems. Next, we divided into groups and each group had a poem that was cut into couplets, so they had to work together to identify the rhyming scheme and piece the poem back together. Once they had it right, they illustrated their poems and I added them to my new display. I really loved the illustrations and the teamwork. Very cute.
And the misses...
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Matt de la Pena Visit!
The last couple of weeks have been largely centered on getting everything ready for my first author visit, and with a Newbery-winner, no doubt.
In conjunction with the other elementary librarians in our district, we were so excited to be able to bring an author like Matt into our schools. Through the power of teamwork, we wrote a grant to our local public schools foundation, and together with our PTOs were able to have him visit all three schools.
He did not disappoint.
Among all my classes, we focused on Love and Last Stop on Market Street to prep our students for his visit, going into varying levels of depth, depending on the grade level.
In conjunction with the other elementary librarians in our district, we were so excited to be able to bring an author like Matt into our schools. Through the power of teamwork, we wrote a grant to our local public schools foundation, and together with our PTOs were able to have him visit all three schools.
He did not disappoint.
Among all my classes, we focused on Love and Last Stop on Market Street to prep our students for his visit, going into varying levels of depth, depending on the grade level.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Whoosh!
Got your attention, didn't I?
I had a great lesson with my 1st and 2nd graders for Black History Month that warranted its own post.
Whoosh! (see what I did there?) is a new book in the library which tells the story of Lonnie Johnson, an inventor who accidentally invented the Super Soaker water gun.
While I love the inspiring stories of the "usual suspects" for Black History Month (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc), I am always drawn to lesser-known people whose stories are worth knowing about. Enter Lonnie Johnson.
I thought this book would be a fun one for younger students, but after I read it for the first time, I read the back matter, where the author told of his inspiration for writing Lonnie's story. He was at a conference and the speaker asked everyone to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. Nearly everyone drew a white man with glasses and a lab coat, which was a sign for him that other stories needed to be told.
I decided to do the same thing with my classes. With no explanation, they came into library with a sheet of paper at their tables. I gave them 5 minutes to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. There were a number of glasses/lab coat scientists but I was blown away that nearly every girl drew a girl scientist. So awesome! I pinned their pictures up and then told them why I had them draw them, and explained why the author wrote this book.
We then read the story aloud and then I shared a clip of Lonnie telling about his invention in his own words (the kids were thrilled to know that he was still alive!).
I had a great lesson with my 1st and 2nd graders for Black History Month that warranted its own post.
Whoosh! (see what I did there?) is a new book in the library which tells the story of Lonnie Johnson, an inventor who accidentally invented the Super Soaker water gun.
While I love the inspiring stories of the "usual suspects" for Black History Month (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc), I am always drawn to lesser-known people whose stories are worth knowing about. Enter Lonnie Johnson.
I thought this book would be a fun one for younger students, but after I read it for the first time, I read the back matter, where the author told of his inspiration for writing Lonnie's story. He was at a conference and the speaker asked everyone to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. Nearly everyone drew a white man with glasses and a lab coat, which was a sign for him that other stories needed to be told.
I decided to do the same thing with my classes. With no explanation, they came into library with a sheet of paper at their tables. I gave them 5 minutes to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. There were a number of glasses/lab coat scientists but I was blown away that nearly every girl drew a girl scientist. So awesome! I pinned their pictures up and then told them why I had them draw them, and explained why the author wrote this book.
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| Look at all those female scientists! |
We then read the story aloud and then I shared a clip of Lonnie telling about his invention in his own words (the kids were thrilled to know that he was still alive!).
This lesson worked equally well for 1st and 2nd grades - and one of my more difficult classes (end of the day on Thursday - they are often spent!), did an awesome job with it. Definitely one I am going to repeat next year!
Monday, February 26, 2018
4th Grade Collaboration
We all talk about collaboration - and it's one of the things that drove me to this career change in the first place - but in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of an elementary school, it can be tough to actually carve out the time to, well, collaborate.
I'm lucky that the 4th grade classrooms are right across the hall from me, and that a number of research projects dovetail into library skills = a great candidate for collaboration.
I had a really great example last week - in Social Studies, students are in the middle of their immigration unit, where they had to interview someone who immigrated to the United States and then do research on their country of origin. Helping with the research was a natural fit but I was able to go a step further with my 4th grade colleague's input.
Their final project required them to tell their interviewee's story, including their feelings during different points of their immigration journey, but the classroom teacher felt her classes could use some practice identifying the beginning/middle/end of their stories. Enter a perfect opportunity to use some of the excellent immigration titles we have in the library.
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| Immigration stories I used as part of this lesson |
My lesson was pretty simple - I read My Name is Sangoel aloud and we worked on this graphic organizer as a class (I modified it a little, where we listed major events in the story on the left side of the box, and then brainstormed how the character was feeling on the right side of the box).
I then read The Name Jar, which had similar themes to the first story, and students worked in groups to complete a graphic organizer on their own. They were really into it, the modeling worked great, and it was a perfect preview of what they were going to be asked to do on their own at home. Win, win, win!
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Mock Caldecott (Mostly) Success
The past month was really busy with my 2nd and 3rd graders as we did a Mock Caldecott unit modeled after the one posted on the Mr Schu Reads blog.
Given timing and attention span of my students, I shortened the list to 11 - I just didn't think I could devote more than 3 library classes to this without them totally losing steam - and timed it so that we finished our "voting" the week before the official announcement was made.
To begin, each student received their own "My Mock Caldecott Ballot" which contained the cover art of each book we were reading and a 4 question rating guide. This was time-consuming with the double-sided printing, collating, and stapling, but with advance planning, it was totally doable.
I kicked off the unit with a very brief history of the Award and then spent more time on the 4 criteria real Caldecott judges use to decide if a book should win the award. I simplified the questions from the ballot on an anchor chart at the front of the room, as well.
From there, we went through 3-4 books per class and students rated as we went. I realized on class 3, that it was going to be a lot of tallying for me, so I had them add them up at the end. Next time, I will remember to include that in the instructions from the get-go.
On to the results...
Given timing and attention span of my students, I shortened the list to 11 - I just didn't think I could devote more than 3 library classes to this without them totally losing steam - and timed it so that we finished our "voting" the week before the official announcement was made.
To begin, each student received their own "My Mock Caldecott Ballot" which contained the cover art of each book we were reading and a 4 question rating guide. This was time-consuming with the double-sided printing, collating, and stapling, but with advance planning, it was totally doable.
I kicked off the unit with a very brief history of the Award and then spent more time on the 4 criteria real Caldecott judges use to decide if a book should win the award. I simplified the questions from the ballot on an anchor chart at the front of the room, as well.
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| Ballot and sample rating - love the color commentary! |
From there, we went through 3-4 books per class and students rated as we went. I realized on class 3, that it was going to be a lot of tallying for me, so I had them add them up at the end. Next time, I will remember to include that in the instructions from the get-go.
On to the results...
Monday, January 22, 2018
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:
Thursday, January 18, 2018
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!
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!
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Wrapping up December
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.
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| "Snow is..." Window Decor |
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.
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| 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!
Friday, December 15, 2017
Month #4
I really can't believe it's already December! It doesn't always feel like it day-to-day, but this school year is flying by. This week's activities, in a nutshell:
Kindergarten kicked off a gingerbread unit that will take them through the rest of the month. We started today with the Gingerbread Man (so many versions out there, but I chose this one by Eric Kimmel). Students first brainstormed what they knew about this story and then we added to our list after we finished the story.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Genres and nonfiction text features and websites, oh my!
We are about 1/3 of the way through the school year and I do feel like I am getting into a groove. I know (most) kids' names and have made some connections with what they are interested in and what they like to read. This was a busy week really diving into to some of the core material I want each grade to be competent in by the end of the year.
Kindergartners heard After the Fall, which is a new book that explores what happened to Humpty Dumpty after he fell off the wall. It's a beautifully illustrated book by a Caldecott honoree and tells a great story about not letting adversity get you down.
My Student Learning Goal this year is for 1st grade and it centers on knowing the difference between fiction and nonfiction. While we have covered some of the basics, I want to spend a few weeks diving deeper into nonfiction text features and how they can help you understand nonfiction. Eventually, there are 6 text features I want them to feel comfortable with, but we started off with 3 today: bold print, headings and captions. Using the document camera and some handouts I made, we walked through what each of these features means, and then they did a matching activity at the tables. Nearly every student completed the activity successfully - I am very hopeful that this will be rote by the end of the year.
2nd grade continued our study into genres. I chose to take a segment of folktales, and focused on the fairly tale subset. We brainstormed some of the common characteristics of fairy tales and used 3 Little Pigs as a mentor text to see if we could see some of these elements reflected in the story. We then read a fractured fairy tale - The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! - by Jon Scieszka, and compared what we heard with the traditional story. I truly love the fractured fairy tale sub-genre - I'd like to think of more ways to explore this next year.
3rd grade also took a detour into folktales, but I plan to take a few weeks to review all the different types of folktales. I'll be honest - this isn't my favorite genre, so I am going to need to get creative so they don't pick up on my feelings! This week we tackled fables - we filled out a graphic organizer as a class about The City Mouse and Country Mouse, and then in small groups, students analyzed a fable in the same way. They did a great job picking apart the nuances of this sub-genre.
4th grade kicked off a multi-week unit on Author's Purpose. We did an overview of the 3 main purposes - Persuade, Inform and Entertain (or PIE, for short), and read one of my recent favorite picture books, The Day the Crayons Quit, to analyze what makes an argument persuasive. As if the PIE acronym wasn't enough, students used OREO (Opinion, Reason, Example, Opinion restated), to break down each crayon's letter and decide if they were persuasive or not.
Last, but never least, 5th grade had one last library lesson on research before setting them loose to freely research their Passion Projects. I don't feel extremely confident that they have had a lot of experience evaluating websites, so that is what we did today. I adapted this lesson from Common Sense Media with pretty good success. I don't harbor any illusions that they are going to fully go through the checklist for every website they visit, but if they at least check a few of the criteria, I'll feel ok!
Kindergartners heard After the Fall, which is a new book that explores what happened to Humpty Dumpty after he fell off the wall. It's a beautifully illustrated book by a Caldecott honoree and tells a great story about not letting adversity get you down.
My Student Learning Goal this year is for 1st grade and it centers on knowing the difference between fiction and nonfiction. While we have covered some of the basics, I want to spend a few weeks diving deeper into nonfiction text features and how they can help you understand nonfiction. Eventually, there are 6 text features I want them to feel comfortable with, but we started off with 3 today: bold print, headings and captions. Using the document camera and some handouts I made, we walked through what each of these features means, and then they did a matching activity at the tables. Nearly every student completed the activity successfully - I am very hopeful that this will be rote by the end of the year.
2nd grade continued our study into genres. I chose to take a segment of folktales, and focused on the fairly tale subset. We brainstormed some of the common characteristics of fairy tales and used 3 Little Pigs as a mentor text to see if we could see some of these elements reflected in the story. We then read a fractured fairy tale - The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! - by Jon Scieszka, and compared what we heard with the traditional story. I truly love the fractured fairy tale sub-genre - I'd like to think of more ways to explore this next year.
3rd grade also took a detour into folktales, but I plan to take a few weeks to review all the different types of folktales. I'll be honest - this isn't my favorite genre, so I am going to need to get creative so they don't pick up on my feelings! This week we tackled fables - we filled out a graphic organizer as a class about The City Mouse and Country Mouse, and then in small groups, students analyzed a fable in the same way. They did a great job picking apart the nuances of this sub-genre.
4th grade kicked off a multi-week unit on Author's Purpose. We did an overview of the 3 main purposes - Persuade, Inform and Entertain (or PIE, for short), and read one of my recent favorite picture books, The Day the Crayons Quit, to analyze what makes an argument persuasive. As if the PIE acronym wasn't enough, students used OREO (Opinion, Reason, Example, Opinion restated), to break down each crayon's letter and decide if they were persuasive or not.
Last, but never least, 5th grade had one last library lesson on research before setting them loose to freely research their Passion Projects. I don't feel extremely confident that they have had a lot of experience evaluating websites, so that is what we did today. I adapted this lesson from Common Sense Media with pretty good success. I don't harbor any illusions that they are going to fully go through the checklist for every website they visit, but if they at least check a few of the criteria, I'll feel ok!
Thursday, November 30, 2017
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.
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.
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| This group's drawing included so many details from the text - yay for paying attention! |
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
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...
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
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.
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.
Monday, November 13, 2017
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.
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.
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| Apple the big winner! |
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Spooktacular
With Halloween just around the corner, I searched for some silly/spooky stories to read aloud. Between my own collection and the one at my local public library, I had a full bag of books, and I had fun reading through them all to find the ones that would work best with each grade level.
Since I had 4th and 5th graders help out with my last display, I wanted to have different students help me out with a new display. I found the perfect tie-in with one of my recent favorites for this time of year, Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.
Since I had 4th and 5th graders help out with my last display, I wanted to have different students help me out with a new display. I found the perfect tie-in with one of my recent favorites for this time of year, Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Holidays = Prep Time
It was perfect timing to have a day off for the Columbus Day holiday. After chatting with my colleagues last week, I was really excited to have the extra day to do some thoughtful planning for the rest of the month. I felt incredibly refreshed going into the week this week, confident in my plans for the rest of the month.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
October!
I've made it through my first month, phew! I'm getting into the groove, though I wish I were learning names more quickly. I keep thinking how much easier it will be next year when I only have to learn one grade's names!
I had a few challenges this week with some particularly chatty/active classes and it made me so grateful to have seasoned librarians in my district to lean on for support/ideas. I met with both of them, who offered me excellent advice on structuring my lessons and managing my classes.
One of the biggest pieces of advice was to keep it simple, which I don't think I have totally been doing. Some of my classes earlier in the week didn't flow as well as they could have, and I think simplifying the activities and my expectations might be wise, especially until I have more experience working with each class. But like my blog title suggests, becoming the LMS I want to be is very much a work in progress - what would the challenge be if everything was easy peasy right off the bat?
On to the week's activities...
I had a few challenges this week with some particularly chatty/active classes and it made me so grateful to have seasoned librarians in my district to lean on for support/ideas. I met with both of them, who offered me excellent advice on structuring my lessons and managing my classes.
One of the biggest pieces of advice was to keep it simple, which I don't think I have totally been doing. Some of my classes earlier in the week didn't flow as well as they could have, and I think simplifying the activities and my expectations might be wise, especially until I have more experience working with each class. But like my blog title suggests, becoming the LMS I want to be is very much a work in progress - what would the challenge be if everything was easy peasy right off the bat?
On to the week's activities...
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Getting a baseline
This week, my lessons centered on getting a baseline of some library skills that I think students should know by the end of the year, except for kindergarten, who had one.last.book care lesson before finally getting to check out a book.
Kindergartners heard We are Going on a Book Hunt and then received a practice library book to complete and take care of. If the majority of students bring their book back next week, the whole class will get to have their first check out. Exciting stuff!
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| One of the tasks in the practice book was to draw a picture of me. These are a few of my favorites! |
1st graders heard Abuela by Arthur Dorros, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. Before beginning the book, we reviewed key parts of book in preparation for end-of-class library activity, a matching exercise.
2nd and 3rd graders heard Biblioburro by Jeanette Winter and then watched a short YouTube clip of the real-life Luis Soriano. 2nd graders located the author and illustrator for 3 books that were on their table, and 3rd grade did a call number ordering activity
4th graders heard Our Librarian Doesn't Tell Us Anything by librarian-turned-bestselling author Toni Buzzeo. They had a chance to show off their Destiny searching skills through a number of task cards that they brainstormed in pairs and shared with the class. I hope all our 4th graders will be library success stories by the end of the year!
I switched up the format for 5th grade and introduced a short research project utilizing Biography in Context, a database that our students have free access to through via multiple Massachusetts agencies. We did a sample search for an author and then students paired up and chose an author to research on their own. My hope is that the fun facts that they uncover about their authors will help populate my author displays over the course of the year.
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