Friday, October 8, 2010

Corny Jokes, Fruits and Veggies, and more!

Week Seven
Ms Kati put up a great new bulletin board

PreK 3 and PreK
Guiding Question: What keeps our bodies healthy?
Nurse Chris came to start talking about fruits and veggies. We will continue next time. The emphasis of the lesson is on identifying fruits and vegetables and understanding that our bodies need FIVE servings of fruits and/or vegetables each day. We read Fast Food by Joost Elfers and talked about the different vegetables and fruits used to make the various objects. Students also did some coloring of different fruits and veggies. These are posted in the Early Childhood lunch room.

Kindergarten
Guiding Questions: What are the qualities of a friend? 
We read another Top 100 picture book to hear more about friendship. In the story Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss, the elephant, Horton, agrees to sit on Maisie's egg so she can take a quick break. Turns out, her quick break lasts ages and Horton's loyalty to Maisie and the egg is really tested! But he stays true, and we see a terrific example of UN-friendliness when Maisie returns and is entirely ungrateful for his dedication to her new chick.

Grade 1
Guiding Question: What is the order of the letters in the alphabet? How does the library use alphabetical order?
We looked a two wonderful alphabet books. In the first, The Z was Zapped by Chris van Allsburg, each letter has something bad happen to it and we have to guess what happened based on the charcoal illustrations.  I love the way the layout of this story keeps us in suspense - we don't know the answer until we turn the page! One of our favorites: The M melted!

The second story, Alphabet City by Stephen Johnson is another guessing book. The author photographs city structures in alphabetical order. The children love to 'see' the hidden letters.

We also played "Alphabet Battle" This is a game played with lettered cards but similar to the game "war." Each player turns over a letter card and the card closest to "A" wins. Great practice for knowing alphabetical order!
Alphabet Battle!
The E beats the K...
Grade 2
Guiding Questions: Who is Cynthia Rylant? What is a personal narrative?
We continue our study of authors who write personal narrative stories. Students define personal narratives as stories related to a past memory. These memories use lots of detail and give us a "zoomed in" or "slice of life" view. We read When I was Young in the Mountains and The Relatives Came. Both tell of Rylant's childhood and the simple joys she felt growing up in the mountains and the fun of having a large group of relatives visit for a whole summer.

We also looked at several of Rylant's other books. She writes the well-known series Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby, and High-Rise Private Eyes in the I-Can-Read section (I). In the chapter book section (jF), she writes the series Cobble Street Cousins and The Lighthouse Family

Finally, we read a wonderful letter from Ms. Rylant to students. She tells us about the importance of play, the fun of being a writer, and her desire to leave the world a better place through her writings. 


Grade 3
Guiding Question: What is a "corny" joke?
We talked about the expression "corny joke" meaning a joke that causes a slight chuckle. Usually corny jokes are the result of puns and word play. Each child found an example of a joke, wrote it on a "candy corn" shape, and decorated it. These are on display in the library. Come lift the flap to see some "punny" punchlines!
Lift the candy corn flap to read the punchlines!
Grade 4
The grade four classes are at various stages of using Library Thing, and Ms. T's class had two sessions in paragraph skills. We learned that the sentences in a paragraph are like the colors in a traffic light. The opening sentence should be a clear main idea, telling us to GO. The following sentences are supporting information, telling us to GO STEADY. The closing sentence should wrap up the paragraph with a clear STOP.



Grade 5
Guiding Question: What is "social networking" and how can we use it to talk about books?
Grade 5 students are given the opportunity to connect their libraries on Library Thing and on our school catalog so they can see what others are reading and share their comments and reviews. We began talking about our responsibility as digital citizens to make good choices in how we interact with each other in digital form. This session, we learned how to "friend" each other. I'm hoping to have lots of grade 5 friends!

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