February 4th-8th 2013

Kindergarten

Kindergarten students enjoyed the book Any & Grasshopper by Luli Gray and illustrated by Guluiano Ferri from our nominated Monarch Award book list. This story was a tale about friendship and kindness as we get closer to Valentine's Day. While reading we discussed how Ant and Grasshopper were treating each other. By the end of the story Ant has changed for the better and we discussed how we can be nicer to our friends and our family.

First Grade

First grade students heard the story The Big Fat Cow That Goes Kapow by Andy Griffiths. This book is segmented into 10 short stories that rhyme and have rhythm. While there is no plot to the book the structure of the story is what we looked at. The book is set up like a comic so after reading we moved to the computer lab. In there we made our own comics with silly people and dialogue.

Second Grade

In second grade the students are focusing on biographies so after reading the story Art & Max by David Weisner we watched a short video on how David comes up with his story lines as well as illustrations. He describes the different media he uses to make his pictures and his thought process throughout. After the video we applied what we learned about the author/illustrator to create an illustration of our own. David started the story with Bears as the main character, but developed them after many trials into lizards. As a class we started with a human outline and morphed it into a new creature or character. We worked as a team to create the different creatures. We were allowed to add anything we wanted, we just could not erase something someone else had drawn. Take a look at our results below.

Schultz's Class

Onorato's Class

Zurales' Class

Walega's Class

Oliver's Class

We are buggy for books!

We continue to read the nominated Monarch Award books this month.

Kindergarten

Kindergarten read the story Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin. Pete visits many of the same places we go to during the school day, but he does it while singing his song. As we read we sang along with Pete. You may have heard us singing when we got home too. It was a very catchy song.

Here is a link to the song if you missed it from the publisher Harper Collins Children's books.

First Grade

In first grade we read the book Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew McElligott.  Afterwards we watched an interview with the author and then listed to directions on creating our own monsters. We all heard the same directions, but our creations came out different depending on what we add to the directions. Such as the monster had one head, but the shape of the head is not given. All of our monster drawings were very creative. At centers we had the chance to give directions to a friend and see the results of our drawings.

Second Grade

The second graders learned about the life of Roberto Clemente in the story Clemente by Willie Perdomo. In this story a young boy gives details on why his parents named him after the great baseball player Roberto Clemente. After listening to the author read the story we looked at a timeline of Roberto's life. While his life had a sad ending we learned about the impact he had on the lives of baseball players, fans, and people's everyday lives. Then we all had a chance to create a baseball card with the facts we learned.

Front of baseball card for Roberto Clemente.

Back of baseball card for Roberto Clemente.

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.

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!