April Showers Bring the Yellow Umbrella!

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For Letter U, I use the book Yellow Umbrella by Dong II Shen and Jae-Soo Liu. This wordless picture book has a beautiful music CD that accompanies the story. Students watch and listen carefully as the alluring story unfolds. During our alphabet journey through picture books I use two different books where the CD is used to further develop a child's listening skills. (Re: the other is for Letter J, the Jazz Fly.) Using a CD, or listening to a story read on a computer, offers a child different ways to access and interact with a story. Originally published in South Korea, this book also introduces students to music from another country.

Mr. Gilley Rules!

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"Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the trashy town!" "Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the trashy town!" chant my students as Mr. Gilley drives all over Trashy Town emptying the trash and filling up his trash truck. He empties trash at the school, the park the pizza shop and more places around town as he fills his truck. Two cute little mice are featured on every spread and the students love to point out where they are. You'll have to ask your child how Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman ends.

A LeSSon on LiStening!

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There are So many Sensational Sides to reading Some Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan EdwardS! It'S a bit of a tongue twiSter to Read Aloud. StudentS get very involved page by page aS they diScover the many S Shaped items and all the S wordS. They wonder why everyone yelling at the Slug and we diScuSS that being Smug iS not a compliment. We learn how to draw a Slug and talk about how important it iS to liSten when otherS tell you to be careful. It'S worth a read with your child.

Ring! Ring!

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For letter R we read Chris Raschka's Ring! Yo? In this clever story we hear one side of a telephone conversation between two boys. The complexity of listening to one side of a conversation does not deter the students love for this book and I am always impressed at how well they listen and understand the story. I have several old phones and the students LOVE playing with them later during our "choice" time.

Recipe for Choosing A Book

My third graders and I had fun this week creating a Recipe for Choosing a Book. We created the recipe and then I modeled making the recipe. Our goal was to select next book we will read together in class! Here's a summary of the key points in our Recipes;

Step One: Go to a "library." We decided there are many different types of libraries; your own library, classroom library, school library, a Little Free Library and public libraries. 

Step Two: Once you are in the library go to the area that has books for kids and choose a shelf and start reading the titles. DO NOT choose a book by it's cover. MAKE SURE you can read the title and that is sounds interesting to you. The title makes you curious to find out more.

Step Three: Read some of the book. That's right! You can read the back cover or the inside front cover or even part or most of the first chapter. This will give you a good idea if this is a book that you will read cover to cover!

The two books we chose to read  are; Fourth Grade Rats and Because of Winn-Dixie.

OG Yearbook Update!

As we approach April Break, the 8th Grade Media Elective Class is working at a feverish pace to complete this year's Yearbook and meet our deadline. We will continue to take photos until the end of the school year for our end of the year slide show and other events. If you see us trying to take a picture this week PLEASE do not cover your face - we have done extensive work to make this the best Yearbook ever and know who is missing from our pages. In photo, 8th graders look at last year's Yearbook as they wait for their portraits to be taken.

Will The Real Eugenia Please Stand Up

Making connections with characters and understanding character traits is a big part of my work with first graders and Ms. Witt's Strand Students. We read several books in a series and one of the series is Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson Books. There are many different goals and objectives when selecting the series books I use but lets just focus on the character of Eugenia. Eugenia is just plain cranky and does not like living next door to a pig! Her loving sister, Baby tries to reason with her, but in a perfect Eugenia moment as she dials the phone we read "I know exactly what I'm doing," said Eugenia "I am kissing that pig good-bye." The students roar with laughter.  I ask, "Is she really going to kiss the pig?" "No! She wants to get rid of the pig!" Everyone wants to be Eugenia and call the police!