Pumpkins Pumpkins Everywhere!

Our third graders recently completed a book report in which they had to read a mystery and create a pumpkin of a character in the book. They were so creative and had so many good ideas! Here are some of the results on display in the media center.

Magic Tree House

Geronimo Stilton

Cam Jansen

Cam Jansen

Chet Gecko

NCSLMA 2012

 

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NCSLMA 2012 Conference. This is a wonderful time to be able to recharge, get excited about what I do, and find lots of great new ideas! I will be posting about many of the ideas I got at some point or another, either over the next few weeks, or as I use some of them in my own lessons, so you get to have some of the ideas too. I highly recommend going to at least one state conference (or national if you can) each year if you can make it. It is a great way to connect with other colleagues, find new ideas, and just stop to think about the direction of your own program. I will be posting some of the ideas as I said, but I want to hear from you - let's have a virtual conference! 

What are some of your favorite sites, lessons, and resources?

Explorers A to Z ... or not?

I am preparing a unit for my 5th graders on explorers and was looking for sites to add to my livebinder for them to use to research their person. I came across Explorers A to Z and it looked like a great site! Looking a little closer, I realized it will be a great site...but not for the reason I thought. Instead of using it for our explorer unit, I will be adding it to my website evaluation unit - on my list of hoax sites. You can see more about the Explorer A to Z site here and how it is meant to be used. They have even color coded the Treasure Hunts for facts by easier with more surface level fact problems to harder, more fact specific issues so you can challenge kids at the level you want. The Treasure Hunts give a real site to visit and their own fake one so they can compare the information.

This is a perfect site to use along with sites like the Northwest Tree Octopus in helping students learn more about how to look at a site and that just because it looks legit, doesn't mean the information is correct. As I was reading about Christopher Columbus, I thought at first they made some typos, because I know he didn't sail in 1942, but of course he didn't have infomercials or a toll free phone number either. Hopefully, kids would catch these things, but then again I was surprised how many still thought the Northwest Tree Octopus was real even after really exploring the website.

What sites do you use for website evaluation and examples of hoax sites? (See a list of my main ones on my livebinder.)

What sites do you use for information about explorers?

What are you scared of?

Our 4th grade AIG students have been working on a project about phobias. Each was given the name of a phobia to research, then prepare a powerpoint presentation containing the information, citations, and a picture and background that represents the phobia. They did a great job and we got some creative presentations! Here are some of their presentations.

Using Videos to Teach Procedures

I decided that it might be both more entertaining and more consistent to use some pre-made videos of how to do some of our library procedures. Our mascot is Caleb the Croc, and I asked him to help me make the videos so they would be more timeless for the students. He was very kind in willing to help! I am planning to not only show these to students, but also post them on the media center website so that new students can see how to do different things in our media center. I can also use them to review procedures later in the year if needed.

I made a short video of things like returning books, using a browsing stick, how to get books that are on hold, using Destiny, and checking out books and magazines. Here is the one about using Destiny so you can see an example. Thanks Caleb!

How do you help your students learn and review procedures?

Welcome Back!

We are back! Teachers are returning to school today, students start back on Monday. We are looking forward to another fun year and lots of great projects! I will post resources as I come across them and projects we try out here at Caleb's Creek, so please check back. Let me know ideas you have as well or cool resources you would like to share with others.

Here is are some quick pictures from my last post's ideas with the finished setting signs. I made the pictures extra large so you could hopefully read the places on the signs. (I hope it doesn't take too long to load!)

Do you know the books all these settings are from???

Postcard Maker

I found this postcard maker today and thought about using it to write a postcard from one character to another, to show non-fiction information, or to write as a fictional or actual person in a historical period. Here is a sample I made. 

 

The postcard maker includes space for the usual mailing address, greeting, body of the message, and closing, but I liked that it also included space to add at the top a title and description along with a citation for a picture on the front of the postcard. This is a great mini-lesson opportunity to have kids cite an image, to talk about describing an image, choosing a picture that fits the assignment, or just adding some authenticity. Give it a whirl - it is very easy and quick!

Solar System Stories

I promised an update on our solar system stories and here it is! About half of my 3rd grade classes have finished narrating their stories, the other half will be over the rest of this week, but here are a couple examples of what I have been talking about!

Didn't they do a great job? Here are some photos from the recording session. I would definitely do this project again, but try to get the kids to use more of the information they researched in the story itself. I have to give credit to Jessica Moore and Winter Park Elementary School for the idea. I went to a session at NCSLMA about her digital story and that is what inspired me to give this a try! Thanks for sharing with us Winter Park!

Mrs. Hentz filling in for absent students

Finished Product!

Solar System update

I talked about our ongoing solar system project before, but we are getting back to it in the media center now to create the photostories this week. In a nutshell, they started with research about the planets with me, moved on to write the stories in character education (incorporating bullies, character ed topics, etc), illustrated the stories in art, and performed SchoolHouse Rock including Interplanet Janet in music class. Now, it has come back to me and we will be narrating the stories this week using Photostory, though there are tons of other programs you could also use. Today I was photographing their illustrations to start the photostory project so they are ready for them to narrate and was so excited about some of the pictures! I have not read the stories yet, I wanted to hear the students tell them for the first time, but if the pictures are any indication, I think they will be great! We are so excited about this project. I will post again on the results when they are finished, but here is some of the artwork I got today.

I love the french beret by the Eiffel Tower

Break the Code

A class recently started reading The Egypt Game which has some information about Hieroglyphics in it, so we decided to do something on secret codes to get the students interested. I created a livebinder with sites about ciphers, the enigma, underground railroad quilt squares, Navajo codes used in WWII, and more. It was fun to pull together! I didn't end up being able to help them with the project in the end due to book fair, but they had enough experience with livebinders by then that the students did it on their own! They even had a sub the first day and told her how to get to them from the Destiny homepage. It made me proud! They created these flip books with information about different types of secret codes that they will share in small groups. They seemed to have a lot of fun with it too and get excited telling each other things they learned.

What other secret codes in history can you think of?

Native American Wordle

Our 5/6th grade AG class has been working on researching various Native American tribes in the United States including elements like housing, dress, government, food, and how they survive their climate. The used this information to write a paper including full citations, then also created a Wordle from their finished paper (after editing and typing!) The AG teacher and I discussed how to grade the Wordle since if they are using a variety of vocabulary you can't count on certain words to stand out. As a result, what we settled on for the Wordle grade is relevance of the larger words to the tribe as a whole. (The paper is getting its own separate grade to be combined with the Wordle grade.) Here are some of the finished Wordles and some pictures of the citations being created and paper being edited and typed.

Citation Maker

Edited paper and creating Wordle

Editing and Typing

Making your Wordle

They enjoyed the Wordles and they are quick and simple to do with an already typed paper! It helped them see the main ideas of their papers in a very visual way!