Monday, November 19, 2007

News From The Library--November 19, 2007



What happens when the state of Kansas is bored? Third graders this week found out in Laurie Heller’s hilarious book, The Scrambled States of America. In the story, all the states decide to switch places and have a party, but in the end, they get homesick for their spots and return. And what will become of that long distance romance between Arizona and Mississippi? Only time will tell… What a fun way to learn about our states!

We also had time to explore our newly found knowledge of the states and work on a word search with the names of all 50 states.


This was an abbreviated week in the Library because of parent conferences so some classes didn’t have library this week.

Those who did….

First Grade--Miss Ishikawa's class heard the mysterious tale, Nursery Crimes by Arthur Geisert, and they were able to solve the mystery of the disappearing turkey topiaries. In the process we had a great time looking at a slide show of topiary animals and learning a bit about deciduous trees. Because those missing turkeys were cleverly made with trees of this kind the thief was caught after the first frost turned the leaves into brilliant colors. Truly an unusual Thanksgiving story but one we all enjoyed.

Fifth Grade--We brought out their notes from 3 weeks ago and students worked on presenting their information. After attending a wonderful workshop by Gigi Kelley of Fisler School about how to incorporate laptops into the curriculum, I decided to have the students use Comic Life to do their short reports. What an amazing transformation from the rather dry paragraphs written in a word processing program! The students were creative and engaged and produced some great final products. Thank you to our administration and school board for having Ms. Kelley come to our school!



Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

1 comment:

Barbara Heard said...

Hi I just wanted to tell you I have really enjoyed reading your blog and checking out the links. I am teaching in England and I'm thinking of starting a library blog at my school.
Barbara Heard