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/