Which book will win?

This week we continue our reading to find out which book will win the 2012 Monarch Award!

Kindergarten

We are reading the book A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Phillip Stead. Amos stays home from working at the zoo when he falls ill. His friends, the animals, come to visit and make him feel better. We predicted before reading which character on the front cover was Amos. We also predicted why a man would be playing cards with a penguin and elephant. During reading we continued to work on our predicting skills to determine where Amos works. We made our own connections to the book while discussing our favorite activities to play.

First Grade

The first graders were introduced to book trailers using the book Blackout by John Rocco. The trailer, similar to a movie trailer, allowed the student to predict the story and the meaning for the title blackout. Afterwards we looked at famous pieces of art that connected with the illustrations in this story. We looked at pieces like "Starry Night," "Starry Night Over the Rhone," and "Cafe Terrace at Night." Afterwards we made a word cloud on tagxedo using details from the story. Check out one of our word clouds below.

Checkout the Blackout book trailer here: Blackout Trailer

Second Grade

binkandgollie.com

   We read the book Bink & Gollie by Alison McGhee and Kate DiCamillo. This book is another book on our list to read before voting which book will win the Monarch Award. The story was broken up into three short stories about two friends who like different things, but still manage to be best friends. After the story we used the challenging words the character Gollie uses to help her climb the mountains of the Andes. We had to solve word riddles and unscramble the letters to uncover the words baffled, pancakes, socks, implore, skate, popcorn, and speed. Then we went to our centers and completed activities like writing our own adventure as Gollie did in the story "P.S. I'll be back later." Below is a student drawing from center time. At the art center students drew themselves in a scene with Bink and/or Gollie. Then they used at least 5 words to describe the scene.

http://www.binkandgollie.com/images/BinkGollie_guide1.pdf

Checkout the Bink & Gollie book trailer here: Bink & Gollie Book Trailer



Next week we will continue to look at other books nominated for the award.

Math-A-Thon Results

Thank you for the support during our Math-A-Thon! Elizabeth Ide school was moved to VIP status within the St. Jude's community because of the amount we have raised for research! Our community has been raising money for St. Jude's for over 25 years with totals over $133,436.50! St. Jude's operations cost 1.8 million dollars a day with over seventy five percent of this money being raised by schools like ours participating in Math-A-Thon. This year alone we raised $2,275.00!

Monarch Awards

Every year students in the state of Illinois get the chance to participate in a voting process to pick their favorite book among a list of 20 books chosen by educators in the state of Illinois. This year we have a new list of 20 books. Each child must read, or be read to, at least 5 of the 20 books. We will vote in February.

Kindergarten
We started reading Monarch books this week with Mo Willems We are in a Book! This hilarious adventure stars Gerald the Elphant and Piggie the Pig. These characters can be found in many other Gerald and Piggie adventures by Mo Willems. Students were introduced to these characters on pigeonpresents.com. We learned Gerald is a safety monitor who loves quiche and Piggie loves to chew bubble gum and dance! After reading we participated in centers concentrating on different areas. Some of us matched upper and lower case letters with Gerald and Piggie. Others read books, illustrated our favorite part of the story, and read and counted our popcorn words.

First Grade
First graders kicked off the Monarch reading list with That Cat Can't Stay by Thad Kranesky. We learned a few facts about the author and illustrator before predicting what they story would be about. We used the illustrators cover photo to predict which character wanted the cats to leave as well as the possible reasons why. During reading we listened to the rhythmic rhyming pattern of the story. After the story we played a brainteaser game from National Geographics called Cool Cats.

Second Grade

In second grade we started the Monarch reading list with Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum by Melissa McCarthy. This story is a non fiction book based on the transformation from chewing gum to bubble gum. After reading the story we watched a video on the process of creating bubble gum. The machinery used for making and wrapping Double Bubble bubble gum produces 900 pieces every minute!