Miraculous Mondays

Monday, January 13^th – Bring in your favorite doll or stuffed animal.

Monday, January 20^th – Rabbit Monday – Students will be learning around the theme of our book.

Monday, January 27^th – Dress up as Edward in your favorite part of the story. (Examples: Edward as a hobo, Edward dressed properly and fancy, Edward as Susannah)

Monday, February 3^rd _ Postcards from Edward – Students will be writing postcards as Edward from his faraway travels.

Edward Tulane Reading Schedule

Chapter 1

listen to ‘Chapter 1’ on Audioboo

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

The professional book I am reading now is Teach Like Pirate by Dave Burgess. It is a book written to inspire teachers to tap into their creativity and passion for teaching.

The children's book I am starting next is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by the magnificent Kate DiCamillo. I've read it before, but it is our One Book, One School selection, so I am reading it again. It's a favorite of a mine.

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

I am reading the book The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism.
The teachers in my school are having a book discussion about it next week.

I am also reading Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. I am reading it to my daughter. We really enjoy the characters, a girl, her crazy mother, the neighbor, the neighbor's nephew, and a squirrel named Ulysses- who may be a superhero.

Journey by Aaron Becker

Journey is a beautiful new wordless picture book by Aaron Becker debuting this year and I was able to share it with all of my classes in the library this week.

I have been using the iPad app Nearpod to create interactive book responses for the students to use as I share books. For this book I used Nearpod to focus on the way the illustrations tell the entire story. The students had to make predictions, follow the story arc, infer character traits, and ask questions about the story. They did an amazing job. On the last slide of the Nearpod activity I included a link to the book trailer. The students were captivated. 

It is wonderful when a book comes by that is a perfect and beautiful story without a single word. Standing ovation!

Just in case you need more- here is the making of Journey.

The Making of "Journey" from Aaron Becker on Vimeo.

Creepy Carrots

This week in the library we are enjoying a little scary humor in the form of the fantastic book Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Peter Brown.

First, we watched the creepy book trailer by Peter Brown discussing the style of his illustrations and his research and inspiration.

Then we heard the story read aloud- it was very creepy.

Next we used the app Felt Board to create our own creepy carrots. They were very creepy.

Take a look!

iPad Expectations

The students helped identify a few very important things to remember when using the iPads. They took picture of each other to demonstrate just how this should look.

Volunteering at Bernie's Book Bank

Book Character Pumpkins

The first pumpkins arrived today: Skippjon Jones and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

Author Tweets

Look! I exchanged tweets with Origami Yoda!
Many authors are on twitter and they often respond to tweets mentioning them.

Non-Fiction Text Features

The first grade class looked at non-fiction books and discovered all sorts of ways they are different from fiction books. For example a non-fiction book may have:
A Table of Contents
An Index
Photographs
Labels
Diagrams
Bold Words
Glossary

Next we took the iPads and used the app Educreations to take a picture of one text feature and describe it. They did such a nice job. Here is Erika's!  And Emmett's!

iPad Minis

The library has a set of iPad minis to use and today the 4th grade had the first chance to try them out. We discussed expectations for handling the iPads then the students took pictures of the correct way to use the iPad. And it was pajama day. 

Bernie's Book Bank

The 5th grade class helped collect books for Bernie's Book Bank. We estimated that around 1700 books were collected. Bernie's will redistribute them to kids who need books at home. A worthy project.

Preschool Storytime

The Preschool Storytime friends make observations about Hedgie the Hedgehog.

3D Dots

Today we used an awesome app called Colar to make 3D dots. The dot page is first printed from their website at colarapp.com. When it's colored in you use the iPad app to view the dot in 3D. Pretty cool!

Celebrating Dots

International Dot Day comes from the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. In the story a girl is able to see herself as an artist when she learns to make her mark. We are having fun this week making dots in the library. Next week we will turn our dots into a video and share it.

Listen to the great song written for Dot Day by Emma Wallace.

Dot Day was even celebrated in Antarctica with penguins!

Here are directions to make a 3D dot. Hmmm... we might have to try this!