PreK-Grade 2
Guiding Questions: What is a trickster? Who was Aesop?We learned about Aesop's life, and we read fables with a fox as the main character. The fox often plays the role of a "trickster," a character who tricks another to get his way.
Facts about Aesop:
He lived in 550 BCE (we learned that BCE means "before Christ era" and explained this a bit)
He lived in ancient Greece
He was a slave (we talked what slavery means)
His master gave him his freedom so he could go tell his stories
His stories were not written down for many many years; they were told orally
Now his stories are written and translated into all major languages in the world
This collection of Aesop's fables is illustrated with sewn fabric pieces. The stories are simply told and each ends with a lesson: "So remember..."
There are online video clips that go with four of the stories as well.
We read "Lesson for Foolish Crow" in which fox tricks crow into dropping a piece of cheese because he flatters her (vocab. word!) into trusting him. We also read "Fox and Goat" in another anthology (vocab. word!) about a goat who trusts a fox. The goat jumps into a well, the fox leaps onto his back, and so the fox escapes from the well, leaving the goat stranded. Both of our stories today showed negative examples; that is, examples of how NOT to behave!
After reading about the fox's tricks, we talked about trusting strangers versus trusting friends, family, and teachers.
Grade 3
Guiding Questions: How can I search the catalog more effectively (to get what I want faster!)We learned about the Basic Search function of the catalog. Each book in our library has a record and the record has four parts that can be searched: Title, Author, Subject, and All (keyword). We learned that searching by keyword is a good place to start if we are not sure of the title or if we are browsing for books. A keyword search will find our word anywhere it appears in record, even in the summary. Once we find a title that looks interesting, we can click on the subject listing in that book's record to see a more focused list of books.
We also learned about the "Sort by call number" option. We can organize our results by call number to clump types of books together. This way we can quickly view only the type of book we want. Remember the types of fiction books?
E = picture books
I = I can read books
jF and F = fiction chapter books
Grade 4
4D worked on creating interesting titles for their short stories. We used Wordle, a web 2.0 software, to get inspired by the words in students' own stories. In Wordle, we can copy/paste any text to see a word cloud of the content. Words used most often show larger than others.4L had reading workshop and practiced using NoveList to build lists of books they'd like to read. Using their browsing and search strategies, students are adding new books to their folders in NoveList.
4T learned about the genre of Tradional Literature. We talked about the types of stories that are considered "traditional" such as fairy tales, folk tales, fables, legends, and myths. Students also found our large collection of tradional literature books in the Dewey section 398.2.
(Due to other activities, 4M was not able to come to the library for a lesson this week)
Grade 5
Guiding Questions: What is a widget and how do we make one?
Continuing with our Library Thing accounts, students each made a widget (a piece of software that runs all the time) to show the books in their libraries. These widgets are now found on students' iWeb pages. As they complete books, the covers and reviews will show there automatically.See my Library Thing widget on the right side of this page?
