Sunday, August 29, 2010

Week of August 23, 2010


The title is "School Librarians Teach Every Student" by David Shannon. I do see every student since I am on a fixed schedule. Every week each class visits the library to hear a story which is carefully selected based on age, content, grade level standards, or it will support a lesson I will teach that day followed with book selection and check out.

This week the Fifth Graders were introduced to my blog where they were able to access a few links I had posted. They were able to use Infotopia, World Almanac, National Geographic for Kids, World Book Online, eField Guides, Infoplease and AOL Homework Help. We also read an excerpt from Guys Write for Guys Read. It was titled, A trip to the zoo, by Jack Prelutsky. This may explain his interest in writing about animals and funny situations.

Fourth Graders were reintroduced to Roald Dahl. We are reading about Danny, the Champion of the World from the Roald Dahl Treasury. It is a condensed version from the chapter book written by Roald Dahl. We discussed biographies and I shared with the students a few lines from Boy and Going Solo...needless to say all my Roald Dahl books were immediately checked out.

Third Graders learned how Melville Dewey at the ripe old age of 21 invented the Dewey Decimal System in only one day! I have a story which I received from a Judy Freeman's workshop that I share. The visuals in the story help students locate certain books. And did Dewey really invent the DDS in one day? No...that part is Fiction....However, the students did browse the stacks with a little more interest than they have before.

Second Graders are continuing their quest to read as many of Patricia Polacco books as possible. This week we read her book titled, Meteor!
I paired this title with some nonfiction books on Comets, Asteroids, and Meteors, by Seymour Simon. The students were so interested in this our 523's took a real hit. They also learned a little about Seymour Simon and his fantastic photographs. Students are now asking for anything by Seymour Simon...

First Graders were on a quest to learn more about dragons. Several were very disappointed to learn dragons never existed...only in books, stories, movies, etc. However, all was not lost when I shared the nonfiction book about Komodo Dragons. I also picture walked through Life Size Dragons, and the ooh's and ahhhs were fantastic. We finished up with a humorous story titled, Dragon finds a friend, by Dav Pilkey. Oh well...all our dragon books are gone from the library :-)

Kindergarteners went on a bear hunt...and a book hunt. We read Michael Rosen's, Going on a bear hunt. What a blast! After each line the kinders would repeat. I would point to the words to reinforce the left to right movement. We followed up with Going on a Book Hunt; going to find a good one, not to easy, not to hard, but just right. Kinders went to the nonfiction section today for the first time and they were so excited they acutally clapped when I introduced them to several of the books and explained the differences between the picturebook section and the nonfiction section.

It was a very busy week.

Happy reading,

Mrs. Wetherell