Voki Book Talks

As part of our Golden Dragon and Silver Knight reading program for grades 3 - 5, I'm posting Voki book talks on our library home page.

Vokis are a fast and fun way to engage students in new titles.

A voki classroom account allows you to set up student accounts as well. ($29 for the year)

How to Voki:

- Design the character (choose clothes, jewelry, hair/eye color, background) Voki gives you "randoms" to choose - just roll the die at the bottom of the sample.

- Tell your Voki what to say (choose either boy or girl and then pick an accent - British? Scottish? US?)

- Type in the text - use punctuation and phonetic spellings to get the words to sound the way you want.

- Publish and share the link or embed onto a website.

Here are the vokis I've posted so far. I'm highlighting a different book each week.

After All, You're Callie Boone, by Winnie Mack

Black Radishes, by Susan Lynn Meyer

Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper

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Festivals, Wiesner, and Sci-Fi

Week 21

PreK 3 & 4: Guiding Question - Who are some characters in Mother Goose rhymes?

This week, we learned three Mother Goose rhymes with characters in them: Little Miss Muffett, Little Boy Blue, and Little Jack Horner. After we practiced together with flannels, we divided into three groups and each group used the flannels to tell the rhymes themselves! 

PreK using flannel pieces to tell Mother Goose rhymes

Kindergarten: Guiding Question - What's a strategy we use to show we're thinking about the story?

Lost and Found, Oliver Jeffers

The Little Mouse...
Don and Audrey Wood

Predicting is guessing what will happen in the story. It doesn't matter whether we guess correctly or not: what matters is that we're THINKING about it! 

As we read these two stories, students made predictions out loud at first, and then "in my head" (tap, tap on our temple) to show they were engaged in thinking about the plot.

Grade 1: Guiding Questions - What do illustrators do? How do they complete a picture book?

An important part of our Caldecott unit is learning how illustrators create picture books. This week we revisited books by David Wiesner and learned about his process for Tuesday  and Art & Max. 

We also read What Do Illustrators Do?, by Eileen Christalow.

This introduces students to the myriad of choices illustrators need to make. It shows the different effect of particular tools and media. One "ah-ha" moment for children is noticing which illustrations have black line and which don't. 

Grade 2: Guiding Question - What are some festivals celebrated around the world?

Second graders are learning that festivals are holidays that are usually not tied to a religion. They are celebrated with large gatherings and often include special foods, parades, and dances. We are beginning to map the festivals we know of and add ones we are learning about using ZeeMaps, an easy-to-use version of Google Maps. See what we've come up with below. We hope each entry will have pictures and video!

I have "tweeted" out our map in the hope that students from other schools might like to add to it! 

Grade 3: Guiding Question - What is "Science Fiction"?

This week we learned about elements unique to the genre science fiction. Using the prezi below, we saw examples of sci-fi and discussed its qualities. Afterward, we did carousel book browsing among three tables heaped with Sci-Fi books at various levels. As we browsed, we tried to guess which elements each book had: aliens? robots? time travel? and so forth.

Science Fiction for Elementary Students on Prezi

Grade 4 and 5: Checking out and reading time

No Caldecotts here

A Ball for Daisy just won the 2012 Caldecott. 

I'm sure it's a lovely book, but for whatever reason, I did not choose to buy it this fall. I will now, rest assured, but it's much more fun to already HAVE the Caldecott winner in our collection. 

I bought lots of other great titles this year, ones that were on many "Caldecott Contender" lists, but alas, they came up short of the gold medal. Happily, I did buy two of the three silver medal winners: Blackout and Me...Jane)

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

And so for this week's book talk post, I list 10 picture books in my home that I dearly love, none of which have won the Caldecott. 

What picture books do YOU have lying around that missed the Caldecott call?

1.    

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad    Day

written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz

2.

The Midnight Farm

written by Reeve Lindbergh and illustrated by Susan Jeffers

3.

Toot and Puddle: You are My Sunshine

written and illustrated by Holly Hobbie

4.

Herbert the Lion

written and illustrated by Clare Turlay Newberry

5.

The Easter Egg Artists

written and illustrated by Adrianne Adams

6.

Corduroy

written and illustrated by Don Freeman

7.

Abuela

written by Arthur Dorros and illustrated by Elisa Kleven

8.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

retold by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

9.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson

10.

The Sweet Smell of Christmas (Golden Book)

by Particia M. Scarry

* Nostalgia alert!

Golden Dragon and Silver Knight books!

Each year grades 3 through 5 students are invited to participate in a reading program called "Golden Dragon" (4/5) and "Silver Knight" (gr. 3). This is a list of books chosen by four area librarians in Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, and of course Budapest.

The program is designed to introduce students to a variety of engaging literature at various levels and of various genres. We encourage each child to challenge him or herself to read five books from the list that are "just right" for him or her. After each title read, the student has an informal chat with me about the book.

Those reading at least five will join together at the end of the year to 

- vote for their favorite book

- get a T-shirt

- have an ice cream party.

Check out book trailers and author websites for these titles on the library website and here.

Golden Dragon books: 2012

And here's a slideshow of the titles by genre.

Silver Knight books: 2012

And the Silver Knight slideshow, with titles by genre:

Happy Reading all!

A rockin' week!

Week 20

This was our first week with our new rockers, and I'm happy to report that we are doing a great job with "gentle rocking" as we enjoy them.

Here's the round-up for our lessons this week!

PreK 3 and 4: Guiding Question - What's similar, what's different?

The Three Little Kittens came to visit us this week. We read two versions of the Mother Goose poem and talked about the similarities and the differences between them. 

The Three Little Kittens, by Jerry Pinkney

This retelling of the Mother Goose rhyme highlights the playful antics of the kittens. We add the sounds "meow" and "purr" when they appear in the text to add an engaging touch. Pinkney's watercolor illustrations show the kittens close-up, tumbling about, acting contrite, and doing their best to behave. 

Classes loved the last line, when the kittens have found and washed their mittens but ask "May we go out to play?" We know they'll be in the same predicament if they do!

The Three Little Kittens, by Anna Alter

A perfect introduction to the classic rhyme, this little volume shows mice stealing the mittens. Colored pencil drawings support the single verse given here. This version is much simpler and the illustrations have a clean look. It's perfect for preschoolers.

Kindergarten: Guiding Question - What's a conflict? How can we identify the problem in a story?

One story strategy we use is identifying the problem in a story. We read together and talk about what the character is trying to solve. Did it work out in the end? How did it get solved?

Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum has a clear problem: she used to love her unusual name but now she doesn't. 

When she starts school, three girls in her class snicker and make fun of her. "Her name has 13 letters!...She's named after a flower!...Let's pick her!" they snort. It's not until the lovely Mrs. Twinkle appears, a music teacher all of the girls admire, that these three realize that a name like Chrysanthemum's is "absolutely perfect."

Grade 1: Guiding Question - What's "creativity"?

For the purposes of our Caldecott unit, we define creativity as having "new ideas." 


There's no better Caldecott winner to introduce this concept than David Wiesner, a five-time medalist. We looked a three Wiesner books and will read more next week as we learn about how an illustrator works. 

We started with The Three Pigs and talked about layout. Children noticed how Wiesner showed the pigs entering and exiting fairy tales by using different artistic styles and extending the borders of the pictures. Next, we read Tuesday and talked about inset pictures and how they allow the illustrator to show the background and zoom in on the action in the scene all on one page. At the end of the story, some children noticed that the clouds on Wednesday morning look like frogs. This made a good segue into Sector 7, an entirely wordless story about a cloud factory. 

Grade 2: Guiding Question - What are some festivals celebrated in other countries?

Light the Candle! Bang the Drum! by Ann Morris
This picture book tells about lots of different holidays and celebrations around the world. As we heard about each one, we guessed the country and pointed it out on the map.

Next, each child took a volume in the series "Festivals of the World" and found a page of interest. We paired together to read captions and learn about one festival in our book. Next week we'll share more and create a map of the countries and their festival.

Grade 3: Guiding Question - What is "traditional literature"? 

Grade three begins a series of genre studies this week. Each lesson, we'll talk about the qualities of a particular genre and share some books in that genre. This week we talked about traditional literature. See our genre map here. It will grow as we add to it each week.

We used an excellent presentation created by Paula McMullen, a librarian in Norwood, Massachusetts called "Traditional Literature 3-5" available for download here. The presentation shows how traditional literature includes many types of stories. 

This flow chart is particularly helpful.

Grade 4 & 5: Golden Dragon book talks!

The book trailers, author interviews, and author websites are up  and ready to view on our library website. Students have already begun book talks about some of these Golden Dragon contenders. I'll also be posting talking avatars called "Vokis" on our home page, each featuring different books from the list. 

Here's last week's Voki about the novel Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper.

New Furniture!

Thanks to additional funding from our Director, the ES library has some fun new furniture to keep our kiddos comfy and cozy while they read.

Floor rockers! 

These sturdy fabric chairs are a big hit because they rock. We have ten of these in the library and students are getting used to the best ways to sit in them. We are being careful not to rock all the way back (!) and to rock in a way that doesn't bump into others or plants (!).

The adjustment period will be brief, I'm sure, and everyone will enjoy having these special chairs to use.

New bean bags!

These are just like our old bean bags, but we have more of them and they are more "cushy." Children like to move these around to their favorite spots in the library to read.

Floor cushions!

These small flat pillows fit just right under PreK 3 through grade 2 bottoms and will keep everyone extra comfortable during our story times. 

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Caldecott Challenge #2

Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McClosky

Caldecott Honor, 1949

Little Sal and her mother set off to pick blueberries nearby their home in Maine. Each carries a pail for gathering berries: Mother plans to can her berries for the winter, and Sal comes along to help. Happily, Mother is not a task-master because Sal much prefers to eat her berries. When Sal digs into Mother's pail to sample a few, Mother reprimands her and Sal wanders off. 

At this point, we get a panoramic view of the hillside they're on - a large scrabbly landscape with lots to explore. When Sal realizes she's lost, she listens for sounds of her mother. But as she comes upon various woodland creatures she's surprised to find they are not her mother! We watch as she and a baby bear on the other side of the hill set a course of parallel adventures, each looking for their mothers and wandering closer to the other's mother.

The action is illustrated with detailed blue ink line drawings. As a child, my favorite pictures were the ones of Sal and her mother in the kitchen. I remember looking at those details, which even then created a scene of an old fashioned life, and feeling the satisfaction of canning blueberries. Reading it with my own children, the highlight was always the sound of the blueberries falling into the pail, "Kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk!"   This is one I've read about a thousand times. Just love it.

New Units!

Week 17

This week we're back into the swing of school and starting new units. I hope everyone had a good vacation. It's fun to hear about all of the travels our little ones have been on these past few weeks.

PreK 3 & 4 - Unit: Mother Goose. 

Guiding Question: What are some Mother Goose counting rhymes?

www.mothergooseclub.com

Each week we'll learn new rhymes with fingerplays and songs. This week we learned a classic "One, two, buckle my shoe" and a lesser known one, "One, two, three, four, Mary's at the cottage door..." 

These are wonderful vocabulary builders and many have videos for extra practice and fun at home. See the Early Childhood page of the library website for videos and rhymes posted from Mother Goose Club.

We use different versions of Mother Goose in this unit, beginning with Rosemary Wells' two wonderful volumes: My First Mother Goose and Here Comes Mother Goose. These feature one poem per page with large text and illustrations making them wonderful for read-aloud.

Kindergarten - Unit: Story Strategies

Guiding Question: What's the difference between "real" and "pretend"? 

We looked at a nonfiction book with photographs of porcupines to establish that "real" means things that actually exist in our world. Then we read What Mommies and Daddies Do Best which features pretend porcupine characters. How do we know they're pretend? They're wearing clothes! 

Finally, we read Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers and Chimps Don't Wear Glasses for more silly examples of things from the author's imagination. These are all written by Laura Numeroff.

Bear playing the drums!

After reading, 
we created 
our own
pretend 
characters: 
an animal 
doing something people would do! 

Rabbit juggling & digging!

Here are two drawings some kiddos did after 
pretending.

Grade 1 - Unit: Caldecott

Guiding Questions: What is the Caldecott award? How do we decide if illustrations are "good"?

We learned that the Caldecott award is given once each year for the best picture book in the United States. There is one gold medal winner and there can be one to three silver medal winners, called "Honor" winners.

As a group we brainstormed ideas about what we like to see in picture books. One of the ideas was that we like colorful pictures. We looked at several black and white Caldecott winners and read one: Kitten's First Full Moon, which I reviewed for Book Talk Tuesday.

As we study Caldecott books in the next several weeks, here are the criteria we decided to look for:

- Pictures that match story (and extend our understanding)

- Pictures that are creative (and we'll look at what that means to us)

- Pictures that grab us (elicit an emotion, or detailed, or use a neat technique, or expressive, or ?)

Grade 2 - Unit: Continents and Countries

Guiding Question: What continents and oceans do we know? 

In their classrooms, grade 2 students are learning about different types of communities. We will support this work by learning about different continents and their countries. In the first part of the unit, we will learn the continents and oceans and do a mini-research project about countries that celebrate festivals. This will support a unit in Hungarian Culture class about the Hungarian festival Farsang.

We read Follow the Line Around the World, by Laura Ljungkvist and talked about the continents, countries, and animals mentioned. We also took a quiz via Shepperd Software to practice our continents and oceans.

Grade 3, 4, 5 - Starting Golden Dragon and Silver Knight!

Stay tuned for a separate post about our reading program for grades 3, 4, and 5. This week, classes learned about the program, about the books and about where to find the trailers and more information about each title.

Book Talk Tuesday: Caldecott Challenge post #1

I'm taking on a new reading challenge, again with picture books. What can I say...I just love 'em! Back in November, I joined my students in reading a picture book every day to celebrate Picture Book Month. 

This challenge is different. There's no time limit (no pressure!) but the task is fixed: Read every Caldecott Medal and Honor book since 1938.

That's 306 books! Here's my first one...

Kitten's First Full Moon, by Kevin Henkes 

Caldecott Medal winner, 2005

This book has grown on me as I've read it over and over with students as part of our yearly Caldecott unit. 

The expressions on the kitten's face, the subtle use of shades of grey, the layout of the pictures, and the patterned text combine to produce an example of stunning simplicity.

The kitten thinks the moon is a bowl of milk and tries various ways to catch it. Period. That's the whole story. But the way we are led through her escapades elicits our emotions: we laugh, feel sorry for her, feel sad for her, and finally...when she returns home and finds a bowl of milk waiting on the stoop, feel relieved for her!

Sometimes students ask, "That's it??" after hearing this one. So we go back and really examine the decisions Henkes made and the effect of each choice.

For example:

- Why do some pictures fill the page while others are boxed in and others have fuzzy edges?

- What differences in layout can we notice and what effect does each have? For example, a tall thin picture accentuates the cat's climb up the tree.

- Why use only black and grey? What are the strengths of this choice and how does Henkes handle the limitations?

- How does Henkes convey kitten's emotions? Which lines in the pictures contribute most?

This story makes an excellent introduction to some of the vocabulary* we'll be using throughout our Caldecott unit and provides a simple overview of picture book design. AND, we have a few laughs to boot!