Awesome Octopuses

As an extension to our fiction/nonfiction work with kindergarten students, we turned to octopuses--an animal with which many students already had a fascination. We began with a quick review of the difference between fiction and nonfiction books, and then we were off with our octopus books.

Students quickly began sharing what they already knew about these sea creatures, and we referred to National Geographic Kids's website for additional information as well.

CLICK HERE to access the full article

With all of our octopus learning, we turned to creating our own octopuses. We used a template from Minieco.co.uk. The template reinforced scissor skills, and students were able to design their octopuses with camouflage elements as they chose. You can CLICK HERE for the template:

Check out some of the students' work:

We're Flipping Over Flipgrid!

Dallas Center Elementary K-2 students have been using Flipgrid with recent lessons, and we all love it! This website and app allow us to record students' work and hear their thinking in their own voices. Each of the grade levels focused on different lessons but ultimately recorded their work in Flipgrid. Check it out!

Kindergarten

Students have been reviewing the differences between fiction and nonfiction text. We looked at examples both from our own library collection, as well as pairs of books featured on BookFLIX. As a final assessment, students looked at various books at their tables and determined whether the book was fiction or nonfiction. As groups, then, students recorded their responses using Flipgrid.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AT FLIPGRID.COM

1st Grade

After talking about ABC order and the importance of alphabetical order in the library earlier in the year, we circled back to those concepts to write and illustrate our own ABC books. After some read aloud examples, students looked at different kinds of ABC books in their table groups.

Students then wrote and illustrated their own ABC books, taking inspiration from the many examples they saw. It was then time to record them reading from their own books.

You can access their Flipgrid videos by clicking on the caption below:

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THEIR VIDEOS.

2nd Grade

Thanks to a fellow K-5 teacher librarian, we tried a new lesson looking at books that have had very few or zero checkouts in a year's time. Reading a book together, we talked about the story and the pictures, offering our opinions about why the book is one that we should recommend to students or one that we should maybe remove from the shelf. Students then looked through books at their tables to choose one that they then used to complete the handout below.

After making decisions about the books they'd chosen, students then recorded their responses on Flipgrid.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS VIDEOS AT FLIPGRID.COM

If you're looking for an engaging and user-friendly way to assess your students--and want your students' voices to be loud and clear!--Flipgrid is a wonderful tool to add to your toolbox! 

Animal Research & Storytelling on the iPads

First graders have been combining several skills recently to complete an animal research project. They began by reading grade-level appropriate nonfiction books about animals and taking notes about those animals.

You can access the notes page HERE.

After gathering facts about their animals, the students listened to Olivia and the Missing Toy by Ian Falconer, as well as Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown. Their purpose? Listen for the true things about these animal main characters (for example, pigs have families and tigers walk on four legs) and be able to point out the untrue behaviors of these characters, like wearing clothes or talking or playing sports.

Next, the brainstorming. Students shared some ideas related to the settings or actions that their animals might do, and other animals or people that their animals might meet in a new, fiction story featuring their animals as the main characters. Popular settings included the mall, the dentist or doctor's office, and school; actions were similar to those we'd already seen and discussed--animals can talk, have friends, read or sing. All of this brainstorming was included on a prewriting page:

You can access the prewriting page HERE.

Students were ready now to write their stories, but this time with a twist--they used the app EduCreations to create their 3-page stories.

Because all students hadn't used this app before, a step-by-step handout was available to them at their tables as they worked. The directions took them from start to finish--everything from finding the app to using the Web search to find an image to using the app Flick to send their screenshots to the teacher. 

Students did a great job navigating not one, but two, new apps and taking their work into the electronic world! After our first day on iPads, all students had created their book covers.

And when students returned to their work in later cycles, they were able to create additional pages of their stories with very little reminders about how to access and use EduCreations and Flick. Here are some of their story pages:

One EduCreations feature we didn't use was the recording option, which would be a great revision to the lesson for next time. Rather than merely taking screen shots of their work, students could also record themselves reading their own stories--what a great addition to the publishing process for them!

Celebrating Halloween with Owls!

One of the popular topics in the library is owls, and what better time to celebrate owls than Halloween!

If you're interested in nonfiction books about owls, you might find one of these in our libraries:

Or maybe you'd like a fiction story with owls? You might try one of these chapter books, like Hiaasen's Hoot or Lasky's Guardians of Ga'Hoole series.

Finally, to celebrate the holiday, you might want to take a look at a children's book--maybe one of our favorites, Owl Babies, by Waddell. You can even enjoy an animated version of the story!