The Snowy Day display

I really enjoy and believe in the benefits of creating whole school experiences for the kids. I do this every year with my Goldfinch Award books. I think there is something about 500+ kids reading the same book and being about to talk about it and connect to each other through this common ground. Right before Christmas, I was wanting to work on making connections with the students. I came up with the following lesson and what was created was so much better than what started in my head!

                    One Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats at South Prairie Elementary

I don't have any windows in the library, so I started my lesson by playing a youtube video of snow falling as the kids walked into the library. For some classes I had gentle snow falling, for others I'd show a snow storm; really, it just depended on my mood!

I had the kids go around and tell me one thing that came to their mind with the word "snow"- we turned it into a wordle. What I really like about wordle is that it will enlarge the words the more they are stated, so the kids get a quick visual of responses. 

Next, we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I told the kids to look for things that they had mentioned from our Wordle. I also told them to pay attention to the illustrations in the book. When they were done, I told them that we were going to have our own snowy day illustrations. Here is what I provided for the kids:

1. I had taken their photo in groups of 5-6 the week before. I printed these out as 5x7 and cut them apart so that each kid got a pic of his/herself, but I wasn't wasting a lot of ink by doing individual pictures. 

2. I had silhouettes of the various "poses" that the boy in The Snowy Day has. Kids could choose one.

3. Scrap paper to make sleds or other props.

Kids made their snowy day "character" and then hung it on the snow hills I had put in the hallway. By the end, our snow hill was very crowded! But most importantly, kids in our building had a shared experience. They could look for their friends, see their classmates creativity, and instantly have their worked "published" for all to see! 

Using iPads to Create Book Promotions

Students in third, fourth, and fifth grade recently used two different apps to create book promotions to share with their classmates. Before they even put their hands on iPads, though, students needed to choose a favorite picture book or fiction chapter book that they felt they could easily talk about and promote to others. With books chosen, students were to take a picture of it to use as a background, then choose Tellagami or Chatterpix to create a promo.

To guide their work, students used this directions page:

Students worked throughout the class period to create their promotions, often talking with one another about their choices and helping one another use the apps, neither of which they'd used before.

Below are some examples of the ChatterPix promos that students created, along with photographs of them at work:

And here are examples of students' Tellagami promos and photographs of their work in progress:

Using the Online Catalog

Second graders have been practicing how to use our online catalogs, including working on a bingo card. (You can read about the full lesson HERE.) Students searched the catalog on iPads for clues related to author, title, and subject searches. To wrap up their work, DC Elementary students tried a "new to them" app--Sock Puppets--to share important tips for online searching.

After generating a class list that included several key ideas for searching the catalog, students created a Sock Puppets scene.

Below are some of their creations:

New Library Centers Approach at DC Elementary

Library centers have been in full swing for more than 1 1/2 years at DC Elementary, and with the new semester just a few days away, it's time to reveal a new approach to the centers. In the past, students participated in centers based on their table number.

Centers rotated each cycle, and students often had choices related to books and reading, technology, word play, and story telling. (You can read about previous library centers posts HERE.)

Now, however, centers will all be free choice, with nine options from which to choose rather than seven. Check out this Vine video that shows a quick overview:



The nine choices relate to some of the same kinds of topics, but also included are centers that feature building and observation, along with some favorites like storytelling and technology.

Stay tuned for updates to the poster and different centers available to students! 

Celebrating Thanksgiving with Balloons Over Broadway

Students in kindergarten through second grade have been celebrating Thanksgiving by reading and talking about the book Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.

We brought the parade to life for students by sharing online images from early Macy's parades, and we took students to Macy's website to talk about the stats on some of this year's balloons.

Finally, we played a short video that showed students how people work together to move the balloons along the parade route.

Students then had the opportunity to color or draw a balloon that they would like to see in the parade, and some even wrote about their balloons in an attempt to convince Macy's to include certain balloons.

All of the students' "balloons" now hang in the hallway for our own parade!

South Prairie students even created a running parade at their tables, and now they hang around the library.

Enjoy the parade! And maybe you can watch the real Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning.

Ninja Swag!

While the Scholastic Book Fair was in our Dallas Center Elementary library recently, one of the featured books was Corey Rosen Schwartz's The Three Ninja Pigs.

During an exchange on Twitter, the author indicated she had ninja swag for students if we were interested. Of course! 

So today, Day 5 students received some great bookmarks and stickers from Corey Rosen Schwartz! Such a great surprise, and they were so excited to show off their swag!

As a way to show our thanks, students in Mrs. Stine's second grade class also used the app Skitch to take pictures of themselves with their swag and write a quick thank-you note for the author. Some examples appear below:

Such a great surprise today--and we're already excited to read Ninja Red Riding Hood next!