WI Golden Archer Awards - Week Two - I Want My Hat Back

We are in the second week of our Golden Archer program which means it's time for our second read aloud! This week I chose to go with I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen.  Jon Klassen just won the 2013 Caldecott Medal for his follow-up book to this, This is Not My Hat.  Congratulations! 

This book is so sweet!  (But caution, it involves the eating of a very cute animal!) 

As a follow up to reading the book, students created miniature hats just like Bear's.  I found the hat template here on Scribd.  

A few action shots of students being creative:

They love their mini hats! 

This book was loved by many.  The simple illustrations made it easy to see what was happening in the story.  The dialogue-only text made it fun to read to students and they enjoyed hearing all of the different voices I could project.  They especially loved my squirrel voice! (Had to be there...) 

Stay tuned for week three of our Golden Archer reads! 

The Golden Archer Awards are sponsored by WEMTA, the WI state library association.  The award is completely student chosen, from nomination to final award.  The 2013 nominees are: 
1.   A Ball for Daisy by Raschka, Christopher (2011)
2.   Blackout by Rocco, John (2011)
3.   Happy Pig Day by Willems, Mo (2011)
4.   I Want My Hat Back by Klassen, Jon (2011)
5.   Polo and the Dragon by Faller, Regis (2009)

WI Golden Archer Awards - Week One - Blackout

The time of year has arrived for the WI Golden Archer Awards program to begin in my libraries!  This is a student-chosen award given out to one book in each of three levels: primary, intermediate, and middle/junior high school.  The award is run by and sponsored by the state library association, WEMTA. In my schools, I do this with all of the kindergarten and first grade classrooms.  I also have one school in which the second grade is also participating. 

The five nominated titles for 2013 in the primary category are: 
1.   A Ball for Daisy by Raschka, Christopher (2011)

2.   Blackout by Rocco, John (2011)
3.   Happy Pig Day by Willems, Mo (2011)
4.   I Want My Hat Back by Klassen, Jon (2011)
5.   Polo and the Dragon by Faller, Regis (2009)


This week was our first week of the program and we started by reading Blackout by John Rocco.  This book is a Caldecott honor book.  I wonder if it will be a Golden Archer Award winner as well? 

As an activity for this book, I choose to adapt an idea from It's All Good Books.  The students were given a piece of night (black paper).  They were to light up the night by choosing pre-cut die cut shapes and writing one sentence on each.  They completed these three sentences: 

The dark is _____. 
I feel ______. 
I wish ________. 

Here are a few student workers: 

I wasn't sure how kids would feel about this book but it turns out they absolutely loved it!  This one might be hard to beat! 

Stay tuned for the next four weeks! 

Nutrition Prezi Projects

Fourth grade students recently studied safety and nutrition as part of their science curriculum.  In looking for something new to do with this unit, the classroom teacher and I collaborated on using Prezi to come up with interactive presentations.

Here is one example:

This project went smoothly.  A few things I did to help the project along were to:
- create one Prezi account under my username that we all used.
- found the plate pictures ahead of time, as there are so many variations out there.

A few things I was surprised about included:
- how easy Prezi was to use for kids.  (My first Prezi, it took me awhile to wrap my head around how the tools worked - not them!)
- how small students wanted to make their supporting sentences.  We even lost a few because they were so little!
- Prezis must be made public for parents to view them when embeded on your website!