Habitat Collaboration

Over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege of collaborating with my 3rd grade and kindergarten bilingual classes on a great science research project. It just so happened the while 3rd grade was learning about ecosystems and food chains, kindergarten was also learning about animals. During an afternoon discussion with one of my amazing kindergarten teachers, she brought up the idea of having kindergarten engage in authentic research as opposed to the traditional full class research project that they usually completed.

 I knew from working with our 3rd grade bilingual classes on a regular basis, that they truly understood research and how to complete a research project at a high level of excellence. Our 3rd graders went through the entire research process beginning with coming up with good research questions and ending with presenting their projects to their peers and even creating an MLA formatted bibliography. These kids were so excited about their projects. I sat in class while they worked on giving feedback to each other. These 3rd graders knew how to give meaningful, specific feedback in a way that is helpful and not hurtful. They ended up with presentations that were truly excellent.

 Thus began a great collaboration experience. The 3rd graders started learning about their habitat and specifically about endangered animals within that habitat. They were then paired up with a kindergarten friend who chose one of the endangered animals to learn more about. The 3rd graders came up with the research questions to help guide the kindergarten students and then assisted them with finding the information online and in books. What they ended up with was an awesome google slides presentation created by the 3rd grader and a book created by the kindergarten student with assistance from the 3rd grader about the endangered animal. We scheduled time in the library for our students to present side-by-side. Administration, parents and other teachers and students were all invited. The outcome was amazing!

If you would like to see some of the presentations, go to this site: 

http://mrsgoregrade3.weebly.com/my-students.html

The presentations are embedded on their science page of their blog.  

Fifth Grade Book Trailers

As our fifth graders finished up their unit on Theme, I challenged them to create a trailer for a book that they had read that represented the theme of the book.  We talked about how music and transitions and design all contributed to the overall effect of the trailer.  Here are some of the great products that our students came up with

TCEA 2016 - My Take-Aways

Perhaps my favorite part of TCEA was the privilege to represent my district and the library program by sharing all of the great MakerSpace collaboration that we have done in the library this year.

December Library Happenings!

I'm a little late in posting but we had a blast in the library in December.  We had our annual Winter Wonderland week complete with all types of great activities.  Here's a highlight of my two FAVORITE activities from the week.

How to Catch Santa 

If you did not discover this book during the Christmas Holidays this year, then you are truly missing out on some great fun!!  From the same author as How to Babysit and Grandpa and How to Babysit a Grandma, this book gives you a hilarious Holiday How-To.  After we read the book, we talked about procedural text and how it is organized step by step.  The students then created their own guide telling how they would catch Santa. 

Flying Elves 

Can you create an elf that will fly when attached to a balloon?  What do you need to take into account so that your elf is aerodynamic?  How do you account for friction?  Does weight make a difference?  These are all questions that our students had to think about while creating their flying elves.   They had minimal supplies and 8 minutes to create an original elf and name it.  Here are a few of our creations.  

Next, cam the fun.  We had a track set up across the library that was made from string.  We used a straw attached to a balloon so that the straw would travel down the track.  The elf was taped to the top of the balloon before we began.  As we allowed air to release from the balloon, the elf was thrust forward across the library.  Students timed each elf as it traveled.  

  

Rudolph's Nose Went Out!!

During December, our students worked on a very important challenge in the library.  We read Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer but then we learned that his nose had went out!!

We had kindergarten, first and second grade classes that participated in the challenge.  They were given a paper circuit with a break in the path of the circuit.  They had to find the right materials to complete the circuit and make Rudolph's nose light up.  

They had a great time trying different things and finally fixing Rudolph's nose.  There were lots of great connections made.  

  

Ninja Story Time with a Snowball Fight (of course)!

When I discovered that December 5th was National Ninja Day, I knew immediately that we MUST celebrate this day of awesomeness in the Joy James library. So, we set up our Ninja celebration for Friday, December 4th.

We started out with the EPIC story of Samurai Santa: A Very Ninja Christmas by Rubin Pingk.  The kids loved the story of the little ninja boy who wanted to chase Santa away.  He felt that Santa was ruining his fun.  None of his ninja friends wanted to have a snowball fight because they wanted to stay on Santa's nice list.  Little did he know, Santa loves a good snowball fight as well.  

Once we finished the book we talked about what an epic snowball fight would consist of and how we would protect ourselves with a fort if we were involved in such a snowball fight.  The students were then given the challenge of creating a fort from boxes to protect their teacher from a snowball that would be launched by students from another class.   They loved working together to decide how to protect their teacher.

Students were then given a large ace bandage (with elastic) and a few plush snowballs.  They had to problem solve to decide how to launch the snowball into the fort.  Many of them made a connection to the game of Angry Birds.  We practiced using vocabulary words like pull, push, force, heavy, light, motion and energy.  

Needless to say, the kids and teachers had a blast.  I think that Ninja Day was one of our favorites!

Monsters from the Monstore

Last week, we enjoyed a great story by Tara Lazar called The Monstore.  The students loved all of the colorful monsters and discussing what they predicted would happen when more and more monsters were brought into the picture.  At the conclusion of the story, I posed the questions, "What type of monster would you have in your Monstore?  How would you persuade people to buy your monster?

The best part of the day was tweeting with Tara Lazar about her book.  It was totally not planned, but ending up being such a great experience for the kids.  Here is a little "snipet" of our Twitter conversation. 

The kids were so excited that we were really talking to the author of the book.  Since that activity, the book has not stayed on the shelf.  It is constantly checked out and kids are asking for it on a daily basis.  I'm going to have to add some more copies to my collection! 

Here are some of our awesome Monstore creations. 

Spiders in the Library

This past Friday, we had the opportunity to become spiders in the library. We had some awesome pictures of spiders and their webs to get us started with our activity. Then we watched a short clip from The Cat in the Hat Know a lot about That to learn how spiders build their webs.

We then gathered on the carpet in a large circle in order to create our very own spider webs.  Students discussed the roles that they would play in the completion of the project as well as how important it was for them to communicate with each other.  We had builders and observers.  While the builders were building, the observers were looking for patterns and shapes in the creation of the web.  They did a great job of explaining what shapes they saw as well as what made the shapes (vertices, sides, angels).  They also discovered that the shapes changed based on how whether you were using 2 hands to hold your string or one hand (it effected the number of vertices).  All we used was basic cotton twine that you can buy at the dollar store.  I started the spider web by passing the string to another student, they passed it on to someone else and we continued until the whole class had a part of the string.  Students then spent some time debriefing and discussing what they had to do to successfully create their spider web.