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!