Book Fair 2010! Peace Love and Books

From November 12-December 3, our 2010 Scholastic Book Fair was held in the media center. We use all profits from the book fair to purchase books and materials for the library. The first rotation we have the students preview the dvd which highlights some of the books which will be sold at the book fair. Students will also make their wishlist while they actually preview the books (At Highcroft we do not preview fluff. Fluff is the stuff such as posters, bookmarks, pencils, erasers, etc.) After making their list students are encouraged to take the list home for parents to preview and discuss with their child. Parents are invited and encouraged to attend the book fair with their child during their scheduled visit. This is called their purchase day...students are allowed to purchase fluff only after their book purchase and parent's permission. This year I scheduled their visits during their media classes which worked out so much better since I was there to help with suggestions, reading levels, encouragement of good fit books, and of course peer pressure...

Week of November 8, 2010

This week I spent time with each class promoting our upcoming Scholastic Book Fair. In addition, I continued with lessons on the following:

Fifth Graders watched a DVD, titled Sacajawea. We used this to document information on our Lotus Diagram about Lewis and Clark's expedition.

Fourth graders enjoyed listening to Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies written by Carolyn Crimi, in support of their upcoming annual Pirate Day. We compared this story to the facts we have learned about Blackbeard. What a blast!

(From amazon.com: Henry is not a typical buccaneer bunny. Instead of performing his proper pirating duties, he would rather read the books that he took from other ships. His father, the captain, is not proud of his son and the rest of the crew makes fun of him. When they are shipwrecked on a deserted island, however, it is Henry and his book smarts that save the day.)

Third graders learned about alliteration by listening to Super Hero ABC. Students then chose a letter of the alphabet, made up a sentence using alliteration and illustrated their own super hero. What a fun way to learn about alliteration!

Second Graders continued with a Jannell Cannon book titled, Crickwing. Crickwing is tired of being bullied. He wants only to create food scuptures to eat himself...not by others...so he sets out to pick on others smaller and more vulnerable than himself....what an ending....you will have to read it yourself to find out how his life changes. Reading this book was not only enjoyable, but had a valuable lesson in character education.

First grades read Ox-cart Man, written by Donald, and is the 1980 winner of the Caldecott Award. This lesson supported the past and present objectives in the classroom. The book focuses on the yearly passage of one man selling his goods only to do it all over again the next year. We used a diagram of the seasons and placed what happened each season with the specific months. This book can be used for various cross curricular objectives.

Kindergarteners began their lesson with a nonfiction text about owls. We learned about what happens as they grow older after being hatched from an egg. After learning about their life cycle we picture walked through a harder nonfiction text which had excellent photographs of different owls with their common name and where they lived. We listed several facts about owls that we learned during our special and followed up with a fiction story about three little baby owls named Sarah, Percy, and Bill. The book was titled, Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. It was hilarious. Most students wanted to check out this book to take home. I was so sad...I only had two copies.

Week of November 1, 2010

This week fifth graders have been field journaling, sketching nature (leaves). This process was used by Lewis and Clark when they were on their expedition while trying to find a passage to the Pacific Ocean.

Fourth and Third graders were learning more about the dictionary and its use. We completed our scavenger hunt through the dictionary which aided them in their vocabulary studies in the classroom.

Second grade students learned about bats, some bat facts, and enjoyed how Janelle Cannon formats her books. She writes a fiction story but follows up with facts about the animals within her book. We followed up with "whats your battitude" trivia questions.

First graders were introduced to illustrators through the use of Ed Emberly's book titled, Go Away Big Green Monster. We also learned that everyone uses different techniques to capture different images. We evaluated some famous children's illustrator's books such as Lois Ehlert, Eric Carle, Tomie de Paola, Jerry Pinkney, Chris Van Allsburg, and Jannell Cannon.

Kindergarten compared a text set of a non fiction book titled, Scarecrows and The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown. We followed up with a lesson on details by drawing different items on a scarecrow template.