Holidays

With the holidays just around the corner, I read Hanukkah and Christmas stories this week. The students always get excited about holidays and hearing stories about them.

In Pre-K, I read The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. The story was very similar to Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

For Kindergarten, I read Where, Oh Where, is Santa Claus? By Lisa Wheeler.

In First Grade, I read The Hanukkah Hop by Erica Silverman.

For Second Grade, I read Santa Claus and the Three Bears by Maria Modugno. It was another twist of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

In Third Grade, I read Eight Winter Nights by Laura Krauss Melmed.

For Fourth Grade, I read I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dreidel by Caryn Yacowitz.

In Fifth Grade, I read Oskar and the Eight Blessings by Richard Simon.

We will not be having library classes next week due to altered schedules and a short week, but students are more than welcome to come and check out a book with a pass from their teacher.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday. See you in 2018!

Hour of Code

This week was Hour of Code week, so we did coding with grades 1-5 through code.org.  The students had a blast!

In Pre-K and Kindergarten, we played the board game Hoot Owl Hoot and recreated Lego structures from picture activity cards.

Everyone had a fun and learned something as well.

Internet Safety

This week each grade level (pre-K – 4^th) watched a variety of videos about internet safety. The videos covered such topics as not sharing your password, never giving any one online your personal information and never meeting any one in person that you met online. Internet safety is an important component of digital citizenship.

In 5^th grade, we discussed fake news and things to look for to verify the accuracy of something on the Internet. We talked about currency, reliability, authority, purpose and point of view. Next week we will be coding in preparation for Hour of Code next Friday.

Wild West Book Fair

This week we had our “Wild West” themed Scholastic Book Fair. My PTA chairperson and volunteers did a fantastic job of decorating, setting up and running the fair. Each day the students had different dress up days to go along with our theme.

We had a Book Bingo night that was packed!

We sold over 2,200 books to exceed our goal of 2,000 and made a total of over $12,000.00. Because we met our goal, Mr. Steele was put in jail (temporarily).

With all of the proceeds, we were able to provide books for the teachers from their wish lists.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make this Book Fair such an amazing success!

Halloween Fun

Halloween was this week, so we watched videos of Halloween stories and then had fun activities to do with each story.

Pre-K watched Spookley the Square Pumpkin and then colored their own square pumpkin.

Kindergarten watched Pete the Cat: Trick or Pete and then colored his or her own Pete the Cat mask.

First Grade watched Scaredy-Cat Splat! then colored a Splat the Cat coloring page.

Second Grade watched How to Catch a Monster and Third Grade watched I Need My Monster. Both grade levels used the Kami website to create their own digital monsters.

Fourth Grade watched Splat the Cat: What Was That? They then chose one of two different Quiver Jack-o-lantern coloring pages to use with the Quiver app.

Fifth Grade watched Hey, That’s My Monster and then created Corner Monster Bookmarks.

This week was full of fun and creativity! Next week will be our Scholastic Book Fair so come on out and buy some books. They make wonderful Christmas presents. 

Text Features and Dictionary Skills

In Pre-K, I read the book Blocks by Irene Dickson since they have been learning about shapes.

We worked on dictionary skills in Kindergarten and First Grade. In Kindergarten, I introduced using a picture dictionary to find words they do not know the meaning of. We played a scavenger hunt type of game to find words that began with certain letters of the alphabet.

In First Grade we discussed the importance of guide words and how they can be used to find an entry in the dictionary. We did an activity where there were magnetized guide words on the board and they had to put the other words in order between them. I was amazed at well they did this activity.

In Second Grade we discussed the difference between inferencing and predicting. We first looked at photos and then read some short passages to infer what was happening.

In Third Grade we discussed different types of text features such as titles, headings, bold print, photos, captions and diagrams.

In Fourth Grade we read The Worrywarts by Pamela Duncan Edwards for all of the alliteration in it.

Fifth Grade had camp this week, so we just did a check out only so that everyone would have an opportunity to get a book.

Next week we will be reading various Halloween stories and doing all kinds of Halloween activities.

Online Catalog

This week I taught a variety of topics. In Pre-K they were studying pumpkins, so I read Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins by James Dean.

In Kindergarten, we discussed what a character in a story was. For this lesson, I read My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann. After reading the story, students had to tell me who the characters were.

We worked on main idea in First Grade by reading Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell.

In Second Grade, I read Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin to illustrate cause and effect.

In grades 3-5, I showed them how to access our online catalog via the PISD Library KOHA Catalog app with their Chromebooks. This will allow them to search for a book by title, author or subject. It will also give them access to a variety of online library resources such as encyclopedias and databases. I demonstrated how they could access this from home and gave them a bookmark with the information to have for future reference.

Hopefully, this will empower them to be more independent when selecting books and being able to use the library resources.

How to Choose a Good Read Aloud Book

Since this week was only three days, we just did checkout only when the classes came to the library so that everyone would have an opportunity to check out a book.

Reading Rockets had a great article for parents about how to choose an appropriate book to read aloud to your child. They had different suggestions for infants to third graders. There are many things to consider when selecting a book. How interesting the characters or topic is, does it have an exciting plot or are the illustrations engaging. Below is the link to the full article and I hope that you will find it interesting and helpful.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-choose-read-aloud-books-babies-third-graders

Columbus Day

This week Pre-K was learning about friendship, so I read Nugget & Fang by Tammi Sauer.

All of the other grade levels learned about Christopher Columbus and how we came to have the federal holiday Columbus Day. We discussed what a biography was and these are the biography books I read to Kindergarten and Second Grade.

For First Grade, I showed them how to access the Pebble Go Biographies from our Library Resources page and then let them listen to the entry for Christopher Columbus.

For Third and Fourth Grade, I read books about Columbus Day. It had some biographical information on Christopher Columbus as well as information on how Columbus Day became a national holiday. These are the books that I read to them.

For Fifth Grade we listened to a reading of Encounter by Jane Yolen on You Tube. This is a story about Christopher Columbus from the perspective of the native people. We discussed how telling a story from different perspectives can really change the narrative.