Another snow day! Can you even believe it?! Now I remember why I thought living in Guatemala for a year was a good idea ... In 1st grade, we read the Chickadee Award book I'm New Here by a Maine author Anne Sibley O'Brien. This is a story about three children who move to the United States from other countries. At first the children feel lonely, confused and sad, but soon they learn English, make friends and feel at home. Students practiced locating maps and learned about timelines. Students constructed a timeline around each character's story to show the beginning, middle and end. We also practiced using the words first, next, and last to retell each character's story. In Mrs. Bosso's class we also practiced summarizing the story with beginning, middle and end as well as first, next and last. During exploratory, students were able to make a timeline of their own about important things that happened in their lives (for example, Funtown Splashtown, getting slushies, and vacation to Florida!) In 3rd grade, we continued talking about opinion writing in the context of another Chickadee book: Land Shark. This book is about a boy who wants a shark for his birthday. There are lots of words in a different font throughout the book that the author wants the reader to emphasize. Students did a fabulous job helping me to read these words with expression. We even found a secret message in just the tall font letters. Students had a choice of unscrambling an opinion paragraph so that it was "Hamburger Style" or writing their own opinion paragraph requesting an unusual pet. I was so pleased many students chose the more demanding task of writing and came up with some great paragraphs. In 2nd grade, we began by guessing which classmate wrote which "Everything is better with ..." statement. (These ranged from "Everything is better with God and Jesus" to "Everything is better with ketchup" to "Everything is better with puppies and kitties.") I was impressed by how well this class knows eachother! We also read land shark. Students practiced retelling the story with drawings and words (using a word bank). Finally in another 5th grade class, I announced the winners in the Guess Who? character contest. Two students guessed 7 out of 10 characters correctly and won a book, Infamous Ratsos (donated by www.curiouscity.net/ ) a 2017 Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Honor Book. Congratulations kids! I hope these girls remember to enter contests/ apply for scholarships going forward! Next, we did a lesson on figurative language: metaphor, simile and personification using examples from songs. Students completed a short Kahoot! quiz to show their understanding after our conversation. It has taken a little while to fine tune use of Kahoot! but this lesson worked. I have to be sure to keep Kahoot! short and practice beforehand a bit longer, so students aren't tempted to guess when we get to the fun game.
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June 2017
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The Information Literacy Cafe