Plagiarism-Wordle Activity

For the second year I introduced the idea of plagiarism to 4th and 5th grade students by reading the book, When Marion Copied: A Book About Plagiarism by Brook Berg. After reading the book I explained that I wanted them to practice a strategy mentioned in the book.  I asked them to summarize the book using only 5 words.  They write them on an index card (or scratch paper) along with their name.  I later type in each word they write into Wordle (www.wordle.net).  I also type in the title, When Marion Copied several times so that it also appears. If you have never used Wordle, check it out.  It is an interesting way to look at text and play with words.  The more often a word appears in a text the larger it appears in Wordle or word cloud (that's why I type in the title, so that it appears (large) in the Wordle).

Here is one wordle I created using the 5 summary words written by students.

You can see the above Wordle by using this link: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6087046/When_Marion_Copied

"We Give Books" Website

I came across the website, "We Give Books", www.wegivebooks.org the other day and it is a wonderful thing!  It almost seems to good to be true.  You can join (it's free) and you can read digital books.  Once you complete reading the book they donate a book (a real, paper one) to a child.  Incredible!  It's the philanthropic arm of Pearson Publishing, and according to their website: We are dedicated to delivering award-winning books empowering you to read and share beautiful stories with children in your life...The We Give Books team works upfront with each non-profit literacy partner to identify the kinds of children's books that best fit their program needs. Some of the same great books you can read online will be donated to our charity partners through your reading efforts. We also donate others they request specifically for the young people they serve. 

Check it out!

Website Evaluation Instruction

     Every year I teach students to evaluate websites so that they will become better internet users.  I watched a news story in September on ABC News about a man who set up 2 fake websites to cash in on the political conventions and collected thousands of dollars.  And I thought, hurray!  This would be a perfect, real-life example of how you need to evaluate information on websites.
   
     Part one of the lesson we cover the parts of a website (header, body, footer), where to look for the name of the organization, authority, currency, contact information, etc.  I use several local organizations' websites for this part (Chehaw, Flint Riverquarium, Albany Museum of Art, City of Albany, Dougherty County Public Library) and students locate the aforementioned information.  Then we discuss what we found.

     This year I started part two of the lesson by going to this website,  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/21/ABC-News-Fake-RNC-And-DNC-Websites-Highlight-Internet-Campaign-Donation-Fraud   which covered the ABC news story and had links to the 2 fake websites (one for the Republican National Convention and the fake Democratic one).  We looked at both of the fake websites and looked in vain for a physical address, phone number or any names.  Then we went to the GOP website and located immediately the full contact information.

     The meat of this second part of the lesson is to compare two websites about endangered species.  I tell the students that I googled the key words "endangered species" and chose two of the listed results.  We then  compare them (I've had students work in pairs and done it as a group with the pairs sharing laptops and I think I prefer the group model).  One was created by 5th grade students http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/5thgrade99/animals.htm and the other is Sea World's InfoBook Index website http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/endangered/index.htm .

     One of the fifth grade teachers mentioned the commercial he had seen lately about not believing everything you see on the internet.   I remembered the commercial and wished I had gotten a link to the commercial.  Another teacher said it probably was on You Tube and it was and here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I .  I definitely will use it to introduce the idea next time I teach the lesson!

      Here's a cartoon from Fitz & Pirillo (I tried to find their website and couldn't, so I copied the image from another website (www.blaugh.com).  It would be a good one to show to students (it covers 2 concepts...plagiarism and internet reliability).

Opinion Writing Lesson

     One of our fourth grade teachers asked me to help the students with writing an opinion essay.  The CCGPS states - ELACC4W1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and the students are to refer back to the text.  She said they were having difficulty with this task.  I found a website that had a good handout/structure, "Write An Opinion Essay" http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/magazines/scope/pdfs/SCOPE-011011-REPRO-19.pdf
I liked the format, which I used loosely!

    The problem was coming up with something we could read fairly quickly that would provide us with something to have an opinion on!  I came up with several subjects (texting and driving, political candidates, European exploration in the new world, Japanese internment camps in WWII, etc).  Finally...a eureka moment!  Pick out a short book to read and one just jumped into my mind (having used it before), Why War Is Never a Good Idea by Alice Walker.

I read the book to the class and created a t-chart (on a large dry erase board) and told them that they would agree or disagree with the statement. Then they gave me specific reasons if they agreed with the idea (that war is never a good idea) that referred back to the text.  Some of the students disagreed and gave me good reasons which I also recorded.

Getting Creative

When my son moved into his new apartment in early August, his bedroom walls were bare (rather depressing!), so I decided to do a painting of our pets for him.  I have been wanting to paint something for awhile, but have always put it off as I knew it would be very time consuming.  But this inspiration was the nudge I needed.  I wanted the painting to be bright and cheerful and capture the personality of our pets.

Collaborating with 2nd Grade...Incorporating Technology

I met with the 2nd grade teachers a couple of weeks ago and asked how I could assist them in any way.  We discussed different ways to incorporate technology, but the ELA CCGPS lesson plans just kept suggesting having the students do a PowerPoint.  I suggested other formats to try out Animoto, Prezi, Windows Movie Maker and after hashing around ideas we decided to use WMM as the way for the students to present their writing on the moon.  The students had worked in groups to write a story with one student writing the beginning, another one (or two) creating the middle, and one student doing the conclusion.  Each student also did an illustration for their part of the story.

I had the students take a photograph of their drawing.  Then each student recorded their portion of the story.  I used a headset microphone and used the Sound Recorder available on my laptop. You should have seen their faces as I played back their recording!  Each time it was priceless...their faces just lit up when they heard their voices and then each one would start giggling.  We also had each group record the title slide.  

I tried to download the videos, but it wouldn't work so here is the link to our school's website where Miss Davis posted the videos.http://www.docoschools.org/isecs/second_grade/Miss%20Davis/missdavis.html.

Comic Strip Creator

I just read about a website that lets you create your own comic strip and have shared it with my teachers. The website is www.makebeliefscomix.com

I created one and here is the link: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=4500790C791517

It doesn't look like you can download it, but you can print it out.  I printed this one out, scanned as JPEG (then cropped the image) so I could add it to the blog.  Lots of fun!!

Guide Words Activity

I did a guide word-alphabetizing activity this week with 3rd grade classes that I created several years ago.  After an introduction where we figure out what they know about guide words, review where guide words are used, I pair up the students. Then I give them about 8 words (laminated, large print) and they put them in alphabetical order.

The students next take the words and figure out where they fit on large guide word pages. On Friday while working dismissal duty, one of the students asked me what activity we would be doing the next time his class came to the library.

 

He was a new student to our school, so I asked whose class he was in so I could figure out what had made him anticipate next week. It was the guide word-alphabetizing activity!  Who knew this simple, hands-on activity would make such an impression.

Fun with Dewey!

I do a lesson on using the catalog every year with students in grades 2-5.  This year when I got ready to cover looking up books by subject (non-fiction) with the fifth grade students I decided to take a risk and show them the video, "Dewey Decimal Rap."

First, using the projector to display the catalog, I look up a book about sharks and we review where the location or call number is.  Then I showed them a web site (http://www.brooklynexpedition.org/structures/infomania/dewey/dewey_main.html) that has about 8 cartoon illustrations which give a quick overview of Melvil Dewey and how the Dewey Decimal system came to be.

Then we watched the "Dewey Decimal Rap" by the StoryYeller.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHiUQb5xg7A  The students loved it!  I know they will at least remember Melvil's name and that he invented a way to arrange books in libraries.  After watching the video the students work in pairs looking up subjects (pre-chosen by me), writing down the title and then locating the book.

Later that day I had a parent stop me in the hall and tell me that if library instruction had been that much fun when she was in school she would have liked going to the library more.  I couldn't figure out what she was talking about and then I remembered that she had been in our workroom cutting out letters when I was working with the fifth grade students!

I also explained to the students that the young man who made the video did it for a class in graduate school when he was getting his masters in library science and that he was a librarian.  One of the students wanted to know if we could get him to come to our school for a visit!

Teaching Note-Taking Skills

For the past couple of years I have been working on ways to improve our students' note-taking skills and increasing the number strategies they use while reading during research.  Last week I used an activity from the website ReadWriteThink called "Fact Fragment Frenzy".  Check it out! http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/factfrenzy/opening.html

The students (4th and 5th grades) did a really nice job working in pairs using laptops and dragging the "fact fragments" over to the notepad.  Several students also told me "That was fun!".  Hey, anytime I hear that a library media skill activity is fun, I'm happy!

This week I followed up the "Fact Fragment Frenzy" activity with a summarizing activity.  I used an idea from the Reading Quest Strategies website, http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html called "Sum It Up".  Using laptops, I had the 4th grade students read an article about a planet from World Book Online (they are studying the solar system in science) and complete the worksheet from "Sum It Up".  I asked them to read the article first and then write down Fact Fragments under the section labeled "Main Idea Words".  I circulated among the students and gave them tips (if needed) on how to write down only the "fragments" not complete sentences.   Some of them got it right away!  Others needed a few strategies or suggestions (like using 2nd instead of writing out "second", not repeating the name of the planet over and over, etc.).  Only a few students had time to get to the 2nd half of the activity sheet where they narrowed down the main idea words to only 20.  We only had about 20-25 minutes to complete the whole lesson, so I thought they did a good job for the most part.

Today's 4th grade class was the first I had to do the "Sum It Up" activity, but I will do it with the remaining 4th grade classes and all the 5th grade classes.

I will probably do another note-taking activity in several weeks coordinating with the teachers when the students will be doing research for a class project.

"The Voice of Future Libraries"

I signed up today to be a part of a on-line community about libraries and their future, called "The Voice of Future Libraries".  It looks like it will be an interesting place to interact and connect to other people who are interested in our future!

http://ideaspace.my-take.com/

Care of Library Book Video...Cute!!

A teacher shared this video, "Don't Let the Pigeon Touch the Books!"  Another way to get the students' attention in an entertaining fashion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzETnigMO-w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Library Display Ideas

I like this blog about library displays,

Library Displays

Creative ideas to promote books from your library collection http://schoollibrarydisplays.blogspot.com/.

It's created by a  librarian in New Zealand and I plan on borrowing a few of the ideas.  There is a cute idea to promote graphic novels.  This is the site where I saw a display called "Guess The Reader" that I adapted for NLW.  http://schoollibrarydisplays.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-02-02T17:50:00-08:00&max-results=10&start=10&by-date=false

Library Do's and Dont's

I saw an idea on a elementary library media center website and decided to give it a go at my school.  I took the original idea, added a twist and created a movie.  I read the book, Underwear Do's and Don'ts by Todd Parr (and that is another story there...the book is out of print, not available at my library media center or the public library so Amazon to the rescue to get a copy) to my third grade classes.  We talked about the pattern and the rules and they came up with Library Do's and Don'ts.  We started out recording the library do's on a white board and afterwards came up with a don't for every do.  The next week I gave them a paper with the do's and don'ts printed on them and they each had the opportunity to illustrate one idea (week 2).  I also video recorded class doing an introduction to the whole project.  I scanned the completed illustrations of one group and wasn't really wild about the quality, so for the next classes I placed the illustrations on different colored construction paper and took a photo.  I liked the quality and the color of that method.  I used Windows Movie Maker to pull it all together and then the 3rd week recorded each student reading the caption of their illustrations.  The students got such a kick out of hearing their recorded voice.  I sent a copy of the finished product to each teacher and will used them also at the beginning of next year during our orientation period to talk about library behavior and care of the books.

Read Across America Day at ISECS

Friday, March 2nd was Read Across America Day, sponsored by the National Education Association's event that celebrates reading on the day of Dr. Seuss' birthday.  Doug joined 13 other readers from the community who read a book to each class at International Studies Elementary Charter School!  Doug is pictured above along with Angela Rivera, executive assistant at Chehaw Park.

Purse Creations

I have made some one of a kind purses for myself.  They are small and made with 100% cotton fabrics.  They are very cute and kind of addictive to make.  I designed some that are being sold in the gift shop at Chehaw.

Sip & Safari

Sip & Safari held on Saturday, February 25 was a great success.  We had a great time.  Enjoyed looking at the animals, hanging out around the campfires, visiting with friends.  The food was great and the band was too!

Check us out as we were "spotted" by the Albany Herald, http://spotted.albanyherald.com/photos/index.php?id=47743

New Adventure...creating our school's website!

In January 2012 several of us worked with Quanna Sumter from Albany Technical College to create a website for our school, International Studies Elementary Charter School.  It was a one day marathon and we all felt like our heads were going to explode.  But it turned out pretty well!  Check it out: www.docoschools.org/ISECS.
We've updated it a few times, but now I'm running into technical difficulties.  All we need is more time to use it so we won't forget how to do things.  Amber is the best.  She is more intuitive than I am about figuring out things.  Maybe it's the age difference!