If You Give a Kid a Book

Second Grade started the school year learning about circular stories, like those written by Laura Numeroff. Side note - when did she drop Joffe from the middle?  I talked about the idea of a circular story ending up right where it began and talked about how a library is like that.  We check out books, enjoy them, have adventures, and then the books (fingers crossed) end up in the library, right where they began.  Students then created class book pages for a book titled "If You Give a Kid a Book" to review book care and library manners.  We used a Google Docs presentation to create each page and I typed the student's words using a wireless keyboard connected to our smartboard computer.  Similar to the Language Experience Approach, typing student's word on the big screen gives them an opportunity to see their words recorded and keeps students engaged in what is happening with whole group instruction.

Take a Magic Tree House Trip

Third Graders are re-acquainting themselves with the library shelves this fall by taking a Magic Tree House-esque trip through the Dewey Decimal System.  Well, actually the activity has now been modified several times over due to the construction and continued "debris", but here was the original plan and one I hope to execute much better in the future.  Each student would start out with a Magic Tree House Title (after discussing some of the elements of the series, i.e. Jack and Annie always find a book in the tree house that takes them to the time and place that the plot centers around) and go to the shelves to find a book that might have taken Jack and Annie to that time or place.  For example, to get to the title, "Tonight on the Titanic," they might have opened up a book about the Titanic.  Once each student has a sample non-fiction book, we can discuss in groups what the DDS numbers mean and group kids together with numbers that are close and figure out what those titles have in common.  So, I thought this would be a great plan.  Then reality hit and the shelves were still blocked by technological fallout and a huge papier machie dinosaur.  So, we did this activity in a similar fashion with cards with the titles printed as getting all the books off the shelves without tables to seat each student didn't seem entirely wise either.  Maybe by Thursday's class, we'll be able to do this activity in its intended fashion.  Maybe.  No promises.

Take a magical trip in your library - read a great book!!

Word Up

4th and 5th Graders have Summer Reading.  As a way to review what books kids read, each class did two activities, each catered to that grades list.  For the first activity, we did a circle and each student told the class his/her favorite summer reading book from the list.  At the same time, I typed the book titles into a list on a word document.  Then, we copied and pasted the list into Wordle.  And, voila!

Following the circle and wordle creation lesson, students also created a scavenger hunt that included finding students who had read certain books, the authors of certain books, or the names of characters from those books.  The students seemed engaged and voted to continue the activity during the next class period to have more time to complete as many boxes as possible.

I plan to create a bulletin board to showcase the wordle that each class created.  Pretty neat summary activity for summer reading!

Pirate Book Buddy Bag

So, I won a prize for the library - hopefully the first of many such contests/grants that help to benefit our students.  I won a Book Buddy Bag that pairs two pirate books - one fiction and one non-fiction.  I can't wait to use this with students!  When I wrote my entry for the contest, I explained that this would be used in a school library to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on and around September 19th.  I got this idea from another awesome librarian, Bev Keegan, of Mill Creek Elementary.  She used it as a fiction/non-fiction lesson with pirate hooks.  They had fiction on one side and non-fiction on the other.  Kids flipped them to display which kind of book was being shown.  I'll be trying this out with first graders starting next Friday...if the hooks are ready.  Fingers, or hooks, crossed!  Listed below is the information for Links to Literacy, the sponsor of the contest - thanks!!!


Web: www.linkstoliteracy.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/linkstoliteracy
Blog for Educators: www.teachingwithpicturebooks.wordpress.com
Blog for Parents: www.literacytoolbox.wordpress.com

Creator of My Book Buddy Bag: http://www.linkstoliteracy.com/my-book-buddy-bag.html