5th grade stick animation

We started a project with a free computer application called STYKZ -stick animation. I had the students come up with an animation and asked them to keep in mind a story that we would later translate through imovie.  We exported our video and created the storyboard in imovie.  It was a super fun project  and definitely made the kids  think about the process to create a story.
Here is one example:

1st grade Little clouds

In first grade we have been talking about the illustrations of Eric Carle.  We read his book "little cloud" and developed our own little clouds using tux paint. It was a great way to talk about illustrations and use of color and imagination. Mrs. Suby's Class book
Mrs. Enright's Class book
Mrs. Oehlerking's Class book

All About Me in 4th grade

We have been working on a really fun project in 4th grade called all about me.  The students filled out an autobiographical poem generator and took a screen shot.  Then they took a real picture of themselves, created an avatar and then used a collage maker on the web called befunky to create a collage.  After a few embellishments they turned out great!

Making Our Mark in a Magazine!!!

In third grade we always start out the year talking about magazines. We look at what kind of information we may find and what is unique about a magazine.  As part of our learning process we have created our own magazine covers.  We have learned about things such as tag lines and featured headlines that entice us to purchase magazines. Here are a few we created using photobooth and big huge labs.

Fontastic First Graders!!!!

Today I was working with 1st graders in the lab.  We are talking about fonts and what that means.  There was a lot of new vocabulary to learn like  font, size, formatting palette, highlighting.  I am also impressed how they retained our discussions of several of the keys we talked about like the return, shift and spacebar. They even used the edit menu to copy and paste.
Here is their proud work using fonts!

Now I would call that FONTASTIC!

5th grade collaborative fairy tales

We are working on collaborative stories and what better than using fairy tales to teach kids about collaborating.  In our assignment each student is in a group of 3.  #1 starts out the story with once upon a time like every good fairytale. #1 then shares that document out to #2 and #3. Then each student is assigned a part to collaborate on.  #1 chooses the characters, #2 choose the where and #3 chooses the when and then we go back to a problem , some dialogue and some other events and voila a story is born. What's even better is that when they are creating this story they are all doing it simultaneously with google docs.  Even the kids are amazed on how slick it works to collaborate on one document.  

Eve bookfair 2014!!!

This year's theme for the scholastic bookfair "Sir Readalot's castle enter the kingdom of books". All the students were excited about the bookfair.  They have been previewing books earlier this week and today started the big event. Such great support from all the parents and volunteers at Eve!

Now these are some dedicated volunteers

Wow now that is a bookfair!!!

Captured at the bookfair!

MEMO/ITEM conference

Last week I had the privilege of  attending what used to be the MEMO (Minnesota Educational Media Organization) annual fall conference and what is now called the ITEM (Information and Technology Educators of Minnesota). 
It was an exhausting and very informative conference.  My colleague Cathy Knutson and I spent several hours preparing for not just 1 but 2 presentations.  One called "Digitivity" or appsmashing which included activities that we have been doing with our students in the media center the last 2 years.  The other was "Promoting your library" .  We all have been feeling the cutbacks in our programs so we were trying to show possible ways of getting the word out of the importance of libraries.
We were also able to attend some great sessions on genrifying your library, new learning spaces, makerspaces and new ebooks available.  So much information in a short time.

EVE walkathon

On friday Sept. 20 Eastview Elementary conducted a walk-a-thon.

The turnout was amazing.  So many parents, students and teachers supporting our school.  Even better we reached our goal!

First day

Well here we are fresh from summer vacation with our EVE shirts on and ready for a new year!  It looks like the kids are ready too!

Summer time

As I went in for a quick check on things in my media center I saw 2 great things.  One a little lending library right outside of the main doors.  The other is the beautifully landscaped front of our school.  Feeling greatful for some many positive things around our school!

Non-fiction using emojis

Everyone loves emojis! Our 3rd graders are learning about non-fiction by using the app pages and placing emojis in a table under the correct non-fiction category.  Dewey See it? Yes we dew!

Caldecott Projects done

This has been a fun project and taken us a long time but I think the kids have developed an appreciation for the work that goes into creating illustrations.  The students have created their pictureson the ipads in an app called draw free and then saved and moved the pictures into a slideshow program called sonic pics where they narrated the books they chose and why.
Here is just a few Caldecott winners that kids chose as books they liked

Here are a couple of samples of work from  students

We love Mo!

1st grade loves Mo Willems! Of course we have talked about all of his characters and books.  From the pigeon to elephant and piggie and of course the sweet and loveable duckling and knuffle bunny.  The 1st graders are making their own character books using all of Mo Willems characters.

Snow, snow and more snowflakes!

One of my other colleagues did this research project with her classes so I thought I would give it a whirl.  Snowflake research.  Yes I know we are trying to get away from snow but the kids were enthralled with the information we learned.  First we read "Snowflake Bentley"

 Next we saw a you tube video called:The science of snow  we also took some notes from the myon books we read one called "Snow" and one called "Flakes & Flurries"  The kids then used an app called snow creator to create their own snowflakes.  Now we are ready for spring.

Where in the world are we? Geoguessr

4th graders were working on Geoguessr a great geography game where students are given a location and have to guess where in the U.S. it might be by looking at their surroundings.  The closer they are the more points they get.  What a fun way to learn about the world around you.

End of I love to read celebration!

Thanks to our great volunteers Mrs. Lundigren and Mrs. Getchman for filling up bags of popcorn for the students for our end celebration.

Mr. Akin reads with his "Seuss" hat to the first graders to celebrate while 2nd graders have popcorn and read in the team area.  It was a great month!!!!

First Graders using "Myon"

Our first graders got their 1st look at Myon this year.  We logged into their accounts and found a book that we liked to read on animals.  Myon is an electronic resource for ebooks.  The kids loved it.  They can read the books on their own or they can have the book read to them.  All students 

K-5  should have brought home a letter explaining Myon and a username and password they can use.

Thank You PTO!!!!!!!

Wow are we lucky! Because we had such a successful bookfair in the fall the PTO gave us the proceeds to use in the rewards catalog and get all these fabulous books!  I tried to cover all of the bases, so I chose some curricular materials as well as some well loved and popular titles. Believe it or not this is $8,000.00 worth of titles.

THANKS PTO You're the Best!

The boxes are HERE!

1 side of the cart. Pete the cat , Little Critter & Geronimo Stilton also became part of EVE

Side 2 of the cart

Here are a few of the students favorite titles!

 These are some curricular titles that we added.

THANKS AGAIN PTO! Now we just have to stamp them and get them out for the kids to check out.

"Your requests please"

In an attempt to see what books kids might enjoy that I don't already have I decided to create a sign with a QR code on it to have the students be able to scan and fill out a request form.  I have also put a link on my media center page and the parent page. http://www.eve.isd194.k12.mn.us/pages/Eastview_Elementary_School  Check it out!

1st grade using Show me

Since we started talking about the difference between fiction and non-ficition and parts of the book I had the first graders take of picture of their fiction book and using an app called show me.  They can import the picture and use the pens to underline the title,  circle the author and demonstrate what the call number would be.  With this app they can record their steps and voice over what they are doing.  The following are just the pictures but what a cool app.

4th grade Non-fiction and beanie babies

Believe it or not even I find it difficult to teach non-fiction but in an attempt to try and make it fun we are using some beanie babies to increase our learning about non-fiction in our library.  The kids get to pick out of a hat the name of a beanie baby.   They will then look up their beanie baby in our online card catalog and find a non-fiction book about their beanie baby.  Then they take an individual picture of the beanie, a selfie with their beanie and one of the beanie reading a book about themselves.  The kids find 3 facts about their animal and then use that along with their pictures to create an imovie.  Here is my collection of 68 beanie babies to choose from.  The next part is creating an imovie with some non-fiction facts about their animal.

Here are a couple of the cute pictures they take