Black History Month and Battle of the Books

Our Pre-K classes were learning about art and creativity this week, so I read Sydney’s Star by Peter Reynolds. Sydney loves to use the world around her to inspire all of her many creations.  Especially her remote controlled star.

February is Black History Month, so I pulled a bunch of biographies of famous African Americans.  I let the K – 3 classes choose what book they wanted me to read.  The majority of the classes wanted either LeBron James or Michael Jordan.

I did have a couple of classes that wanted to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marian Anderson.

This year is the first year that I’ve decided to do a Battle of the Books. I created a March Madness style bracket system of the top 16 popular fiction books that have been checked out this year.  Since this is the first year, I am only having 4^th and 5^th grade students participate. All completed brackets are due Monday, February 27^th.  We will complete the first round of voting on March 3^rd.  Our Spring Break will be the week of March 6^th, so we will resume our rounds of voting when we return.  We should have all voting completed by March 31^st and I will announce the winner on April 3^rd.  I’m excited to see what book will be the overall favorite and which student did the best job of predicting the winner.

More Texas 2x2 and Valentine's Day Fun

For the Pre-K thru 2^nd grade classes, I read another book from the Texas 2x2 list in order to help students reach their goal of at least 5 books in order for them to vote for their favorite in April.  I have now read 3 books to each grade level.  In Pre-K, I read What This Story Needs is a Pig in a Wig by Emma Virjan.  I read We Dig Worms by Kevin McCloskey for Kindergarten.  This was very fitting because they had recently studied soil.  For First Grade, I read We Forgot Brock by Carter Goodrich.  I read The New Small Person by Lauren Child to Second Grade.

We have been working so hard on learning research steps in Third, Fourth and Fifth Grade, that I thought we should have a little Valentine’s Day fun.  We played the AND game.  One student came to the front of the room and picked a slip of paper out of the bucket. They then read what was on the paper with the exception of what was after the word “and”.  The rest of the class had to then guess what the next word should be.  Some examples were bacon and eggs, macaroni and cheese, and bed and breakfast.  Some were really easy and others were a little more difficult.  They all enjoyed playing this game and even asked me if they could play it again sometime.

Our PE department has asked that we pass along these important messages.  Please help if you can.

Dear Parents-

This year Christie Elementary has the opportunity to win some amazing prizes for our wellness program.  Anyone in our community can click on the link below and enter for a chance to win a $30,000 grant for our school's healthy transformation AND a new playground.  While there are other prizes available, this would clearly be an amazing opportunity of our kids!  The sweepstakes runs until March 24, 2017 which is right around the corner.  Please set your alarm on your phone or post a sticky note on the fridge to log on each day and vote.  Also, feel free to share with family and friends to help increase our voting numbers.  Thank you!

http://www.togethercounts.com/at-school/win-for-your-school/sweepstakes

BLOG: FITNESS FLEXERS

The PE staff would like to provide you with an opportunity to help ALL kids at Christie.  We are in need of approximately 27 yoga balls for our fitness class.  We hope these yoga balls will provide us with an opportunity to have drum fit lessons and core strengthening opportunities.  Therefore we have created a DonorsChoose.org classroom request.  Please click on the link below to help support us.

https://www.donorschoose.org/project/fitness-flexers/2447604/

Once funded, we'll update the PE blog with pictures of how our Christie kids are enjoying their fitness lessons while ultimately becoming healthier citizens.  

P.S. If you know anyone who may want to help, please pass this along! 

Biographies and Evaluating a Website

Since I wasn’t able to see the Pre-K classes last week, I read All Sorts of Shapes by Hannah Reidy this week. The students had fun identifying all of the shapes in the book.

For grades K-2, I concentrated on biographies. We discussed what a biography was and then I read one to each grade level. In Kindergarten, I read about Abraham Lincoln. First grade I read a book about Eleanor Roosevelt and for Second grade, I read about Helen Keller. Each one of the people we read about helped bring about change in the world and really wanted to help others.

This week we continued our discussion about research with evaluating a website with 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade students. It’s important to know who the author is, if the information is current and unbiased and that it is appropriate. The students were given a bookmark to help them remember the things to look for when evaluating a website.

Groundhog Day

With Groundhog Day being this week, I decided to read some Groundhog Day stories. For First Grade, I read Substitute Groundhog by Pat Miller and I read Groundhog’s Day Off by Robb Pearlman.

Kindergarten students are getting ready for First Grade by learning how to use shelf markers to find their library books.  This week they watched a brief You Tube video about how to properly use a shelf marker and then got to practice while I supervised.  I reminded them to be sure and put the book back on the shelf with the spine label in the correct position and not upside down or backwards.  They all seemed to do a wonderful job! Unfortunately, I did not see any Pre-K classes this week because I was out the day they came to the library.

We did start a new incentive for returning books this week.  Each week for the remainder of the year, students will receive a P.A.W.S. card if they have returned all of their books.  Hopefully, this will encourage some students to get their books back in a more timely manner.