Remember When We. . . Emailed Tucked the Cat

In the 2012 - 2013 school year, Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj was one of the Iowa Goldfinch Books nominees.

During our read aloud and lesson, students drafted emails to Tucker, and he--along with the author's assistance--replied to the students' questions and comments! We even got a picture of Tucker playing hide and seek with us!

Want to know more about our students' emails and Tucker's responses? You can read about them HERE on the original blog post.

Our First Mock Caldecott

After reading about several elementary library lessons related to the Caldecott Medal, we decided to try our own Mock Caldecott unit. (You can read about The Busy Librarian's lessons and Travis Jonker's lessons, too.) We roughly followed their lead, but of course we had our own timelines, books, and student needs to consider. :)

In our early stages, students listened to several Caldecott Medal winners and honor books, as well as examined them on their own. Students discovered some were wordless books. . . 

. . . some illustrations were black and white. . . 

. . . and some were really funny!

After looking at many, many books, students worked in their table groups to evaluate the wide selection of nominees for our first ever Mock Caldecott Award. We teachers modeled how to complete the scoring guide, and students then practiced assigning points to books at their tables before scoring them "for real."

Based on their scoring, these seven books were the finalists at Dallas Center Elementary:

Again taking our cue from the librarian blogs we'd read, our next step was to discuss the Caldecott Medal itself before students designed a medal for our own buildings. In class, students voted for the two medals that would be our "finalists," and they also voted on the winning book from our narrowed list of nominees.

So what book was the 2013 Mock Caldecott winner at Dallas Center Elementary School? Cat Secrets, by Jef Czekaj.

The winning book now features the Mock Caldecott student-designed medal, and the other six books--our Mock Caldecott Honor books--will feature the medal as well.

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Cat Secrets

Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj is one of the nominated Iowa Goldfinch Award books this year. One of the activities first and second grade students did was visit his website and contact Tucker the Cat, the writer of cat secrets for all cats. Below are the classes' emails (written by the students themselves) with their replies from Tucker (and translations from Jef!)

A response to one of Mrs. Ellis's 1st grade classes

A response to one of Mrs. Ellis's 2nd grade classes

Here's the picture Tucker mentions in his reply above. He asked if you could see him hiding. . . do you?

Tucker's reply to fan mail from South Prairie Elementary