Be A SUPER Reader

I just finished teaching 2 weeks of summer school and we had a blast.  Our theme this summer was SuperHeroes, to go along with the City Library's Summer Reading theme "Every Hero has a Story".

My goal was to integrate literature with technology.  We started the summer off by reading the story "Superheroes ABC" The K-2 students dressed up like superheroes and we took their picture (super cute) the students told us what they were super at.  We had answers from math, and reading to Minecraft and singing.  The 3rd and 4th grade students looked up the word hero in the dictionary, then typed their own definition of what a hero is.  Another favorite book was "Buzz Boy and Fly Guy" by Ted Arnold.  The students practiced their typing the title then they illustrated it:

The older students practiced changing the font and the letter size as they were typing.  We also made our own superhero emblems, just like superman, yet they put their first letter in the middle.  Students typed what their super power would be and we glued it on the back of their emblem. 

We read the book "Salt in My Shoes" about young Michael Jordan.  Students shared some of their favorite athlete heroes.  We visited the website "Create an Superhero Athlete" by Gatorade and each student was able to create their own athlete superhero.  As the weeks go on the students will read and talk about Everyday Heroes, such as fire/police/military.  We will be typing and creating pictures to send to local heroes.  I hope the summer school students had as much fun as I did!  Now to start thinking about new ideas for fall!  How crazy is that!

NETA 2015

Today I am enjoying my second day at NETA in Omaha.  This morning the speaker George Couros brought me to tears about five times.  He emphasized that building relationships with your students is super important. These kind of conferences get me re-energized.  I have so many new tech ideas that I am anxious to try.  Too bad there are only 3 weeks left of school.  Thanks Mrs. Gonzalez for allowing me to attend!  I will be sure to share what I learned with my colleagues.

Crete Elementary celebrates Dr. Seuss' birthday

Monday, March 2nd
Today was Dr. Seuss' 111th birthday and our school celebrated by decorating our doors with the theme "Oh, the Places You'll Go".   The doors turned out amazing.  Our whole school went on a walk at 2:45 and toured the school and admired the creations.  Here is a sneak peak at some of the doors.

 

It was a fun way to celebrate and see what creative ideas the classes had.  The classes walked down through the gym to answer a few quiz like questions about Dr. Seuss or his books and received a bag with "Oh the places you'll go" bookmarks and cool swirly lollipops.  

Scholastic Book Fair = Success

Each February brings the Scholastic Book Fair to our school.  This year the theme was "Explore and Ocean of Books", so our library turned into an ocean filled with fish, sharks, squid and jellyfish.  Some of the favorite books this year were "Ranger in Time" and "Pete the Cat", of course we sold lots of Lego and Ninjago books too.  It was an exciting and busy week with lots of children enjoying wonderful books.  I was lucky to have the Crete Rotary members volunteer to help run the cash registers, they did a super job.  And the benefit to hosting the book fair is a stack of brand new books for our library!

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

As I sit at home today (our 2nd snow day this week) I decided to catch up on all the fun activities we have been doing at the Crete Elementary Library.  And since it is so snowy out,  I should share the snow activities we have done in the month of January.  Even though January was fairly warm,  we still decorated the library snowflakes and read many snow books.

 Olaf was a huge hit with all ages!  It is amazing
how many young children can sing the "Frozen"
song "Do you wanna build a snowman?

 Funny story about the large snowflake snowman by the door.
The first day I hung him up, I went to the lost and found
bucket to get a real scarf for his neck.  It wasn't but 15 minutes later and a 2nd grade student recognized his
scarf hanging on the wall.  He was embarassed to ask for his
scarf back, yet I was glad all it took to find it's home, was
to hang it on the wall.  No one has claimed this black
scarf yet.

 I collected at least 30 "snow" type books for my snow
display, and withing a few days, the shelves were empty!  That's a good thing right!!
 

We also were blessed with
a snowman collection for the month of January.  We
had over 30 named snowmen decorating our shelves.  Everything from Frosty, to Shimmer Glitter, to Sparkles, and we even had Dancing Dan.  Thanks Jeanette for sharing your treasures with our students!

Reindeer Facts

 Did you know reindeer don't have any top teeth?
Reindeer can travel in herds of up to 100,000.
Reindeer use their 2 toes to dig under the ice for food.

These are just of a few of the interesting facts that our students learned about reindeer.

As the First Graders have been exploring the non-fiction section
of our Library, we have been researching reindeer.  We used both reindeer/caribou books and the internet to gain many interesting facts.  Students then chose 4 facts that they wanted to share with others and wrote them on their "All About Reindeer" sheet.

Kindergarten Authors

One of the topics I cover with Kindergarten every year is Author/Illustrator.  Most of the time those words are new vocabulary for our students.  This year each Kindergartner was able to write/draw in their own book.  We even made an author page for their book, which included their picture and a few of their favorite things.  Books were a hit!