On to a new beginning

I have taken a new position in a middle school check out my new blog here
http://nothingbutlibraries.blogspot.com/

I love to Read "2016"

This year was a whirlwind!  The time came and went so quickly but I like to try and celebrate "I love to Read" month so the kids just have something fun in the media center to celebrate reading.  The year's theme was "EVE Super Readers" with a superhero theme.  I think my favorite part was decorating with the bright colors and city like landscapes.  In order to keep it light we had a trivia question each week for the month of March for grades k-2 and 3-5.  The kids filled out a ticket with the correct answer and put it in for a drawing for some fun prizes.

Here are some pictures from our fun and fantastic month of reading!

                

A month of fun!!!

Contest Winners!!!!1

   BAM the checkout desk                                        Mr . Sherman

Hooray for PTO!!!

A huge thanks to our PTO for supporting our library!  We are so fortunate to have such supportive parents in our school.  Well here it is!  All of the books that we purchased with our proceeds from our bookfair!!  There are lots of books from fiction to non-fiction and everything in between. I always try to purchase some titles the kids ask for or that I know are high interest.

Here is our bear that takes suggestions for books from students!

Monsters in the Library???!!!!!

This fall our theme for the bookfair was Monsters.  The bookfair was a huge success thanks to Amy Solinger and Heidi Weist plus many others. The kids love it and are always so excited to see what great books there is out there to purchase. We are so lucky to have great volunteers and such a supportive PTO. Thanks!!!!!

          

 

4th grade projects with beanie babies

I love to make learning fun but sometimes it is just plain hard to teach a let's face it a not so interesting topic like the dewey decimal system.  So I decided to use beanie babies.  I had several just sitting around my house from my own children and I had some donated.  I decided hey these might be really useful to teach kids about non-fiction.  So we took a picture of the beanie by themselves, one of them with the student and one reading a book about themselves.  The students did some research about their animal using the destiny app to find their book about their animal and had to come up with 3 interesting facts .  They put the pictures in an imovie presentation recorded their 3 facts and then used an app called Chatterkid to create a talking animal describing where they would find them on the shelf.  It was a great activity to get kids to find the book and get a better understanding of non-fiction.
Scroll down to the bottom to see our finished projects!
Apps we used for this project

Here is some of our finished products!

Kindergarten & pete the cat

We have been studying one of my newest favorite book characters "Pete the Cat".  Pete is a big hit among the young students and he even has some groovy tunes to go along with his books. Take a listen
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons" Song

 

Here are some of my kindergartners creating their own groovy glasses on pictures of themselves using draw free

I love to read 2015

This year we decided to move "i love to read month " to march.  I always try to decorate the media center with a fun theme for the month.  This year it was Dr. Seuss loves to Read.  I filled some bags up with stickers, bools, erasers, pencils, bookmarks etc.  The students had the opportunity to answer trivia questions each week and then put their name in for a weekly drawing to get a goody bag.  The kids loved it and it was a great way to celebrate the month and fun as well.  Some of my past themes have included pirates, carnival, Theatre/Award theme, western, Chinese New Year etc.  Dr.  Seuss is one of my favorites and the kids too I'm sure.

3rd grade QR codes

What a fun way to introduce kids on how to use and create a QR codes other than creating an author poster using pic collage.  The students choose an author to research.  They find books by the author, a picture of the author and then create their QR code.  Here are a few examples:

 

Lois Ehlert and Colorforms

In Kindergarten we have been talking about shapes and how Lois Ehlert uses lots of shapes to create her stories in her books.  We used the app Colorforms to create shape animals.  The kids loved it!!!  We also talked about how Lois Ehlert is from Wisconsin.  We found out almost everyone has a Wisconsin connection.

Check out this cute video of kindergarteners and their creations!

3rd grade Cinquain

We started our cinquain project this late fall and are just finishing up.  The 3rd graders started used their google documents to create a cinquain poem where they learned about poetry, word processing skills like font, size,  alignment and placing graphics.  A fun project for 3rd grade.

Check out Mrs. Verkinderen's class book.
Mrs. Lemaster's class Mr. Mosher's class Mrs. Liekis' class

Caldecott Winners!!

In 2nd grade we start talking about what a Caldecott medal is and about the whole process illustrators go through to create books.  The Caldecott medal is given to the picture book with the best pictures for the previous publishing year.  This is fun to talk about with the kids and see if they can figure out what type of medium the artists have used for their illustrations.  We conducted our own mock vote so we can see if we came up with the same winner.   The difficulty is in choosing who might be nominated for the award.  There is no published nomination list so I look at different websites that list possibilities.
Stay tuned for our projects that will be finished the end of February!

The students voted and according to their top 3 this is what they chose.  I also had my 3rd graders vote since they had done this project last year.

1.  Beekle

2.  Draw !

3.  Sam and Dave Dig a Hole

The actual winner was:

Honor books included:

 

 

I guess you could say the kids know how to pick them.  Stay tuned for the student projects coming up later this month!

Kindergarten with Mercer Mayer

Kindergarten has been busy this year being in the computer lab but now we are trying out our ipads.  They did great as they learned about Mercer Mayer and some of his books.  We picked an app called just me and my mom to introduce kindergarten students to the world of books on the ipad.  This one was great because it was interactive.  I had them click on the option to read to myself then they could tap on each word to read to them and tap on other things in the pages to see words.  There was also the challenge of finding a frog character on every page.  Having fun while they learn.

All about 1st graders!!

Every year I like to have the students create something that gives me a little insight to some of their favorites. We used a program in the lab called kidspiration where I created a template and they filled in some of their favorite things. My favorite part of this project is where they create the small picture of themselves. Adorable! This project is a good one for developing the use of the paint tools, resizing graphics, changing font size and type, and dragging and dropping.

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!