Lions, Tigers, BEARS…Oh My! No, we’re not putting on a theatrical performance of the Wizard of Oz (at least not this year). First Graders were hard at work this week choosing animals for their Research Reports. I’m lucky to work with two fantastic and very skilled Primary Teachers, who have managed to mold and teach 27 (yes, that’s a TWENTY SEVEN), first graders this year. Just this Monday, kiddos were introduced to this assignment and they were literally chomping at the bit to get started! First things first: Find a book! I pulled almost 100 titles from our non-fiction section in hopes that students would find something to help them either decide on which animal to learn more about OR give them a good head start on their research. Most everyone walked out of the Library in the afternoon with a great informational text about an animal (or amphibian or mammal) J Another piece of the learning over the next few weeks will be utilizing a website called Pebble Go!
What a cool way
for young, emergent readers to learn more about non-fiction text features as
well as informational text topics. They’ve
got everything from the Presidents, to holidays to animal facts. One really super cool feature:
THE SOUND button! You can simply click on the volume and sound
button next to the text and your reader can listen to the text while they
read.
November brings a
new Virtue focus for us at school and it couldn’t fit better for what we
celebrate this month: SERVICE. This week with all the classes, this Virtue
was introduced and it’s exciting and encouraging to hear how students make
connections to this in their own lives here at school and at home. With the Third Graders, we read a tender and
sweet Caldecott Award winner: A Sick Day
for Amos McGee by Philip Stead and Erin Stead.
Kiddos were able to infer all the ways Amos demonstrated the Virtue of
Service and how his friends repaid him when he needed it the most. I was thrilled to hear of all the exciting
and new ways my students were attempting to show Service this week; either at
home or here at school. 
Fourth Graders
continued their work with note-taking and synthesizing new informational
text. This week was the third week in
our Cornell Notes lesson and I’m so pleased with their diligent work and
focus. Taking their highlighted text
(from last week), with their partners, they identified KEY words and wrote
phrases and lists to assist in their note-taking. The last exit activity proved to be the most
challenging as students pulled together all their information and wrote a succinct
and organized summary (3-5 sentences) of what they could glean from the
text.
Stay tuned for
more exciting adventures in the LIBRARY!
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