March Library Bulletin Board

I saw a really awesome bulletin board on Seize the Day with Second Grade.  It inspired this rainbow bulletin board.  I put this up in March, just outside my library.  I filled the empty space with book covers and the saying "Luck is finding the perfect book".

(This picture was after a little oopsie! with the background paper...)

The saying is cut from the Cricut cart Birthday Bash at 3.5".  The book covers are from recent JLG book orders.  Kids really like seeing the book covers and it sparks interest in new books.

Second Grade biography projects

Second grade is working on completing their unit on biographies.  Students learned about the 921 biography section in the library and, after having time to browse, selected a biography that interested them.  They then completed a graphic organizer which listed at least five facts about their person.  I stepped in for the production portion of the project.

Students selected an image from Britannica Image Quest, a picture database we subscribe to.  We then used Blabberize to make our famous person speak about themselves.

Here are two examples from Mrs. Calabria's class:




And another:



What did I learn from this project?  Blabberize is as temperamental as ever.  I really love their service and the kids do too but I'm not sure I can suggest it's use anymore.  I could get about 5 bios recorded and then it just wouldn't work anymore.  It took many days of a few kids at a time to get this project done.

If you have alternatives to suggest, please do so!  I would love to hear them!

World Read Aloud Day 2013

Wow!  World Read Aloud Day was a whirlwind of adventure for our Parkview students!  World Read Aloud Day is sponsored by LitWorld and is a day to celebrate the right of everyone to read aloud.  This day has been in the works for our elementary students for a few weeks now and we were so excited for it to finally arrive.

There was a small hiccup when a snow storm blew through the country and two of our four planned Skype sessions had to be canceled but through a flurry of Twitter and Google Doc connections, everyone who was scheduled to Skype today got to do so.   Here are a few pictures of our day:

8:30am - Mrs. Calabria's second grade classroom met author Meg McKinlay.  It was very exciting that since she lives in Australia, we had just gotten up for the day and she was getting ready for bed!

 10:00am - All three first grade classrooms met with author Jamie Michalak.  We even got a sneak peak of newest not-yet-published Joe and Sparky book!

11:10am - Fourth graders in Mr. Laufenberg's class read I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen to a Kindergarten class in Massachusetts.

1:30pm - Mrs. Cardinal's Kindergarten class was read to by a third grade classroom in Iowa.  They shared the book Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett.

World Read Aloud Day was an amazing experience for our school, as it was the first time to Skype for many teachers and students.  Connecting globally is wonderful and exciting!

Book Fair: Story Laboratory science lab

I just finished out a very successful Book Fair at the largest of my elementary schools.  It was such a great year!  The spring theme from Scholastic is "Story Laboratory: reading gives you superpower".  I went all out with the science lab theme.

The first thing I made sure to do was order the decorating kit from the Scholastic Resource Kit.  I always use a portion of the $100 advance Scholastic Dollars they give you to purchase this.  While a majority of the items I use are re-purposed or purchased, these kits always seem to have the little details that you can't find anywhere else.

When walking up to the Fair, you see this bulletin board in the hallway:

This idea was born from this science bulletin board.

As you enter the Fair, the doors look like this:

The reading tube was an idea from Scholastic.  I purchased the clear PVC rooking panel and concrete form that the duct tape is wrapped around from Menards.

The check out desk:

A different view of the library:

One of our book-eating robot friends:

This robot was inspired by this amazing post on Book Fair decorations.

Are you having a Book Fair? I would love to see pictures of what you did.  Share your link in the comments!

Story Laboratory Book Fair

Our Spring Book Fair at Parkview is almost here! To get the kids excited, I put up a simple bulletin board using the fair decorating kit available from the Scholastic School Resource Catalog. The borders were also purchased from there.

You can visit our online fair here until March 12.

As I get more ready for the Fair, I will be sure to share.  I know I am always looking for ideas!

WI Golden Archer Awards - Week Five - Happy Pig Day!

I saved the book Happy Pig Day! by Mo Willems for the last book in our Golden Archer program.  I did this because I knew the kids were excited to hear it and I wanted to keep that excitement going until the very end.  Dangling the carrot perhaps?

This is another Elephant and Piggie book in which Gerald, the elephant, feels as though he has done something wrong.  He receives a big surprise though and all is well in the end.  This book is written through dialogue and the students really enjoyed it. 

For our activity, I took two pages from the Happy Pig Day! Event Kit published by Pigeon Presents for Children.  Students were able to help Gerald get dressed for the big event or create a Pig mask of their own to wear.  The pig mask was more popular by far but Gerald had a few fans as well. 

Next week is voting!  I can't wait to find out how my kids vote, as this year all of the books are very good in my eyes!  Are you participating?  Please share in the comments what you are doing that works well for you! 

WI Golden Archer Awards - Week Four - A Ball for Daisy

Week four of the WI Golden Archer Awards program brings my groups to A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka.  This book was the 2012 Caldecott Medal winner.  I chose to do this book next so that we could practice our new skill of reading wordless books.  Students remembered right away to not cheat by looking ahead at the pictures to come on the page.  This is especially important for the climax of this story. 

As a follow up activity for A Ball for Daisy, I chose to have students divide their paper into four parts and draw a wordless story of their own.  In most classes, the telling of the story took 20 minutes so they weren't left with a lot of time to draw but many of them had good beginnings.  Here are some of my hard workers:

This story features a cat named Rosie.  In the second frame, her owner is taking her for a walk.  I am having a bad memory right now but this student had an entire story already going with just these two frames.  She was very excited to take her paper with her so she could finish the story at her next opportunity.  Perhaps she will bring it back to share next week? 

This story is of a man who goes on the hunt for a shark.  It takes him a long time but eventually he finds one. Again, the amount of detail the student was telling me while explaining the photo was amazing.  Students are amazing! 

I found that my second grade classes were the best at telling this story because they were really able to put themselves in the place of Daisy and think about her feelings throughout the story.  All of the levels understood the story but second grade showed the most empathy for Daisy. 

Stay tuned - two more books to go!