Goldfinch Work, Part II

It's busy times in the library during Goldfinch Award book "season." :) We've paired additional books and have had thoughtful, creative work from our students. Recently, we read The Little Shop of Monsters and Fright Club.

Students quickly picked up on the mood of the books and enjoyed the unexpected "scariness" of the cute little creatures in Fright Club and the silliness of the monsters in The Little Shop of Monsters. 

As an extension of the day's readings, students at South Prairie visited The Little Shop of Monsters website, where they watched a video first and then designed their own Pocket Monsters. 

Students at Heritage Elementary and Dallas Center Elementary used iPads to design their own monsters using the apps Doodle Buddy and Monster Moogle Maker.

Both apps allowed students to choose a background and design a monster, usually an animal that they then modified to include physical features and accessories to create the perfect, scary monster!

Another pairing of Goldfinch Award books has been The Night World and Sleep Like a Tiger.

Author Mordecai Gerstein's note at the end of The Night World is a great place to start with students as you prepare them for the read aloud, and the sleeping animals on the last page are a wonderful transition to Mary Logue's Sleep Like a Tiger. We also watched a video called Animals at Rest to gain some background knowledge or reinforce what we already know about sleeping animals.

Students then designed their own night worlds on black construction paper using light-colored crayons and colored pencils, or they wrote and illustrated a page showing the animal they most resemble when they sleep.

With Goldfinch Award voting not happening until March, stay tuned for more read aloud pairings and ideas! 

Getting a Start on Goldfinch Books

We've recently begun reading some of our Iowa Goldfinch nominees and completing different follow-up or extension activities. We began with The Bear Ate Your Sandwich and Bear & Squirrel are Friends.

Before listening to the two stories, we watched a PebbleGO video about black bears. We learned that 2 of us kindergarteners lying head-to-toe are likely as long as a 7-foot black bear, and 4 or 5 kindergarteners in a group weigh about as much as one!

After the stories, students completed this handout, choosing two more animals that probably aren't "friends" in nature, but like Bear & Squirrel, maybe they could be friends!

Our look at Goldfinch nominees continued with "the crayon books"--The Day the Crayons Came Home and Frankencrayon.

Kindergarteners got creative and designed their own scribble "monsters" using an activity from Greenwillow Books.

First & second graders focused on two crayons from The Day the Crayons Came Home--Estaban and Neon Red. Acting like travel agents, first graders decided which world tourist destinations Estaban visited once he finally made it out of the house. After choosing destinations, students then wrote a postcard in Estaban's voice, describing something from his travels.

Finally, second graders helped Neon Red visit European landmarks that he may have missed as he made his way back to Duncan. Using Google Draw, students dragged an image of Neon Red to one of several destinations--check out a few of the class examples below:

Stay tuned for more activities and ideas related to our Goldfinch books!

Holiday Season Activities

It's that time of year! With the holidays approaching, we took a break from state award book activities to have a little holiday fun. Students participated in a variety of both technology-related and craft activities to spread holiday cheer.

Kindergarten
Time for some reindeer games with our youngest students! Students listened to a read aloud of Little Santa, as well as watched Olive the Other Reindeer before also watching a short Britannica Online video of reindeer in the wild. Students learned that 12-14 of them together can weigh as much as just one reindeer!

Then it was on to a craft, when students cut out and put together pieces of a reindeer to take home with them.

1st Grade

These students listened to Redbird at Rockefeller Center and watched a video to learn about the real holiday trees that have stood between Rockefeller Center and the world-famous skating rink for nearly 90 years. 

 Depending on the students' attendance centers, students then either created a holiday tree of their own, or they used the iPads to access the Quiver app to bring a tree "to life."

3rd - 5th Grade

Our older students also got into the holiday spirit with different holiday games shared with them through Google Classroom. Click on the caption below the picture to access the document.

ACCESS THE DOCUMENT HERE

Looking for more wintery Google activities? Try this post at ControlAltAchieve by Eric Curtis: 

Happy holidays from all of us at the DCG elementary libraries!

1st Grade Library Detectives

First graders at Heritage Elementary and Dallas Center Elementary have watched several book trailers this year featuring different detective series books, such as the Inspector Flytrap books, the Nate the Great series, and the Chicken Squad mysteries.






To continue our look at detectives, students did some of their own sleuthing around the libraries in both schools. We first read aloud a book from another great children's detective--Scooby Doo!

We talked about the work Scooby and the gang did while trying to solve the case and then compared it to the work in Nate the Great: The Case of the Fleeing Fang.

Nate the Great reminds us beginning detectives that you need to think, notice, work together, and remember when you work to solve a case. It was just these four things our 1st grade detectives did when they approached their first task: to decode different reading messages around the library.

Students first practiced decoding a message in the back of the Nate the Great book, then they set off in partner groups armed with the secret code (made from using the special characters in Google docs), magnifying glasses (because why not?!), and the paper (which included the visual hint as to location) to record their message.

          

Once students had begun their sleuthing, we continued with a scavenger hunt-type activity that had students first finding the clues around the library then finding books on the shelves that matched their clues.

Again, students worked with their same detective partners and used the magnifying glasses to help them in their search. Students recorded several different responses for the clues, as there were many books matching the clues from which to choose.

With all of the students' work around the libraries, they've become more comfortable looking for items throughout the space, and a few even wrote their own secret codes! Some great additional outcomes after an engaging few days in the library!

Mock Caldecott Work at Heritage Elementary School

Heritage Elementary second grade students have recently named The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Daywalt and Adam Rex as the Mock Caldecott winner in the building.

In addition to choosing a book, students also named their award and designed a medal. After many voting rotations, students chose "2nd Grade Goldshroud Award" as the name of their medal, and the winning design is now placed on the book.

To start their work, second graders learned about the criteria for the true Caldecott Medal and looked at several winning books along with Caldecott Honor books. We started with last year's winner Finding Winnie.

Working then in table groups, students evaluated 28 different picture books using the evaluation page below:

You can access the handout HERE.

Based on total scores from all second grade classes, the students narrowed their choices to seven finalists:

Using the same scoring rubric, students looked anew at these seven books and evaluated them to determine the winner. Finally, then, students voted on the name of their medal as well as the design, and the winning book was chosen.