Golden Sower Award

In honor the Golden Sower Nominees for the Upper Grades 4-6 we created a corner display to encourage our 4th graders to read the 10 Golden Sower Books.  The sower is tossing out his seeds (books) in order to grow an amazing flower (Golden Sower Award).  I tried to encourage students to read these 10 books by giving book talks and watching a few book trailers.   Below is a list of the 10 books and their authors:

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea

Everything for a Dog by Ann M. Martin

Familiars, The by Adam J. Epstein and Andrew Jacobson; illustrated by Peter Chan and Kei Acedera

Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, The by Barbara O' Connor

Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur

Lucky: Maris, Mantle, and My Best Summer Ever by Wes Tooke

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

Storm Mountain by Tom Birdseye

Walls Within Walls by Maureen Sherry; illustrated by Adam Stower

Wildfire Run by Dee Garretson

If you go to the Nebraska Golden Sower Award site you will find lots of information about these books.http://www.goldensower.org/index.htm

Out of the whole list I successfully read 9 of the 10 books.  I am not much into fantasy books so "The Familiars" was not a favorite of mine.  I did enjoy "Out of My Mind" it brought tears to my eyes.  I chose to read "The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester" by Barbara O'Connor aloud to all my 4th graders.  It took us approximately 10 class periods to finish the book.  We learned all about submarines and bullfrogs while we were reading the book.  I contacted Barbara about the possibility of Skyping her to learn more about the book and she graciously agreed. So on Friday, Jan 18 we will visit with her over the internet.  Students had a chance to learn more about Barbara by visiting her website and watching a short author video on her.  I can't wait to share this experience with the students on Friday!

        Elmer the Elephant  By David McKee

I was very excited to received 8 paperback books all about

Elmer the Elephant from "Books Are Fun".  I decided to

create my own elephant unit focused all around Elmer the Elephant.

Elmer is a very unique patchwork elephant that is always joking and

tricking his friends.  One day he is tired of always being different and decides to trick his friends by turning himself gray like all the other elephants.  Elmer scares his friends and they say "Too bad Elmer isn't here to see this"  As the rain falls, Elmer turns back Elmer color.  So in honor of this special day, the other elephants decorate themselves colorful like Elmer and Elmer decorates himself elephant color and they have an Elmer day parade.

The 2nd grade students talked about being unique, the other way to spell it "You"nique, and how it is important to be yourself.  Then all students were able to create their own uniquely decorated elephant for our Elmer Day Parade.

We read many other books by David McKee, Elmer Again, Elmer in the Snow, and Elmer and Grandpa Eldo.  We learned about characters (Rose, Wilber, Grandpa Eldo) and talked about the different settings of the stories.

My favorite activity of our Elmer unit was reading the Pop up book titled:

It had wonderful pop-ups throughout the story.  So a perfect culmination project was for each student to create their own pop-up with 2 characters and a setting.  I had the basic cuts for the pop-up ready to go. It took 2 class periods to complete this project (1 hr total).  The first day we read the "Elmer Pop-Up Book" and colored our 2 elephants and the 2nd class period we finished decorating the scenes and added our our creative unique touches.  Many students had an owl popping out of the tree or a snake popping out of the grass.  All 120 pop-ups were amazing. Here is a look at our process and our finished products.

What a wonderful time the students had with this project.  We invited the office staff in to share in our celebration.  We read them our "Elmer poem" and took a tour of our pop-up projects.

Here is the Elmer poem Gloria and I wrote for the students;

Elmer the Elephant is funny
Elmer the Elephant is cool
Elmer the Elephant is silly
We can read about Elmer at school.

Elmer the Elephant is colorful
Elmer the Elephant is bold
Elmer the Elephant can do anything
Reading about Elmer never gets old

Book Wreath

Here I am in January trying to catch up on what happened in December.  Linda (our MS/HS librarian) and I were able to attend our ESU #6 Media Meeting in December.  As we shared ideas and talked about the possibility of e-books/e-readers in our libraries, we also tackled a cool craft.  Using an old paperback book, we cut the spine off of the book, rolled each page and hot glued it to a styrofoam or wood circle.  Depending on how the pages were rolled, each wreath turned out unique and different. I brought my wreath to school and wrapped a ribbon around it for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

Here is a link to pinterest if you would like to try it:

http://pinterest.com/pin/112308584429826873/

Audrey Wood Author Study

First grade students have been reading many of Audrey and Don Wood's picture books as we did an in depth author study.  We began our author study by learning all about Audrey's life as a child.  Audrey and Don have an amazing website that shares lots of background information.  Here is the link http://www.audreywood.com/.

The first book I shared with the students was "King Bidgood's in the Bathtub"  This book is a Caldecott Honor book because of such wonderfully detailed pictures.  We read and listened to the song to go along with the story. The song is so catching I was singing it for days.  But my most favorite part was acting the story out for the class.  We had a variety of "Kings" that wouldn't get out of the bathtub. (Miss Nitzel, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Bruha, Mrs. Gonzalez) I wish I would have remembered to take a photo.

Some of our other favorites were Piggies (we made 5 Piggy puppets), Silly Sally (we made a class book), and Napping house (flannel board).
We read Heckedy Peg last as it has a different feel than most of her other books.  Some children loved it and others were terribly scared of the witch. We also read "Alphabet Adventure" which was illustrated by Audrey's son Bruce Wood.

Overall the students enjoyed reading books by Audrey.  Many students have figured out where the "wood" books are on the shelves and hunt them down.

2nd Grade Reads Magic Tree House

Second graders spent most of September and October enjoying the first book in the Magic Tree House series called "Dinosaurs Before Dark" written by Mary Pope Osborne.  I read the book aloud to them.  As Jack and Annie went on their first adventure, they met a Pteranodon.  2nd graders learned what a Pteranodon really looked like.  We read a non-fiction book that contained lots of information about Pteranodon's, they had a wing span of 28 feet, their head was 7 feet long, their body was fuzzy and they had no teeth yet mostly ate fish.

Mrs. Keck and I folded an origami Pternaodon to hang above our cart filled with fiction and non-fiction books about dinosaurs.  I have to admit that for most of the month all of the quality dinosaur books were checked out, in part due to the dinosaur display.

To end our dinosaur unit, students were divided into groups of 2 or 3 and were assigned a dinosaur to research.  We used the site "PebbleGo" to fill out a fact sheet about their dinosaur.  After all 9 dinosaurs were researched, we complied the factual information and created a podcast that shared all we learned.  I have been having difficulty sharing our podcast, yet the students have listened to them.  We visited the site www.magictreehouse.com where the children completed a few online missions.   The Magic Tree House series is a hot item now. Students are very interested in seeing where Jack and Annie travel next.

READING FOR FUN

It has been quite awhile since I have spent time sharing what has been happening in the library, so  tonight I am going to try and catch up.  Students come to our library once every 3 days.  One time I have a library lesson planned for them and the next time they come is a check out day. I usually try to read them a picture book to go along with what we are studying, or sometimes just pick a book off the shelf just for fun.  There are so many good books, and so little time.  Kdg and 1st grade students check out 1 book.  2nd, 3rd and 4th may check out 2 books.  I am really trying to stress "RENEW" this year.  It seems like students want to keep their books indefinitely (Why am I complaining that they are keeping their books??).  Yet the longer they keep them, the more likely they are to get lost. So I am asking that they bring their books back to the library so I see them and can renew them for another 10 days.  After students check out their books they are invited to spread out in the library and enjoy some "quiet" reading time.  Here are a few photos of students I caught reading.  Way to go!

Dot Day 2012

Crete Elementary School participated in International Dot Day this week. All 1st graders who visited the Library this week read the story "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds.  We talked about making our mark in the world.  Then students were able to be as creative as they wanted with crayons, markers, watercolors, tissue paper, construction paper and stickers to create their very own dot.  Each dot was unique and all 130+ of them are hanging in the Library for our school to view.