Friday, March 2, 2012

Literacy Day 2012

What a day this is! We have had live author visits, Skype author visits, a news reporter and other mystery readers, and so many people dressed as their favorite book characters. I am glad I am not the one judging the door decorations this year - they are all wonderful! Here are some pictures from our day!

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Author Visit from Jane Edwards and Renee Pappas

Skyping with Suzanne Slade
Wait, who is that sleeping in the office? Sleepy?

Katie Nordeen from Fox 8


There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...



Judy Moody and Grace

There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves...

Piggie and Elephant

Why is the Evil Queen using our office computer?


Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Sneezy was literally out sick!)


Asleep on the job again!! We need to talk to that Sleepy!
Library Door - The Giving Tree (the theme this year is going green so this is 100% reused materials!)

Very Hungry Caterpillar

There was an old lady who swallowed some clover


Dinosaurs Love Underpants


Pout Pout Fish


Amazing Grace



Bridge to Terabithia

Watsons Go to Birmingham


LOVE that they posted the permission to use the Pigeon character from Mo Willems!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus



Ramona the Pest




Oh the Places You Will Go


The Foot Book




Green Eggs and Ham

The Giving Tree

Hello Ocean

Where the Wild Things Are

Green Eggs And Ham

Jan Brett

The Lorax





Bad Case of Stripes

4th grade doors from Soft Rain




Al Capone Does My Shirts


Island of the Blue Dolphins


The Landry News


Mr. Lincoln's High Tech War


Sleepy Again???


Skype with Suzanne Slade!

We were lucky today to get to have a Skype session with Suzanne Slade as part of Literacy Day! She has written about 85 non-fiction books for kids and was a lot of fun to talk with. We even met her dog Corduroy! A second grade class that had recently been studying biographies was the class that got to talk to her and they came with many great questions. We found out there is even a picture of her son and husband canoeing in a book she wrote about canoeing. Thank you Ms. Slade!! We hope we can talk to you again next year for Literacy Day!


She showed us a map of schools participating and where she lives in Chicago.

The kids were prepared with questions they wanted to ask!



She showed us some of her books.


We even got to meet her dog!
Thank you to Suzanne Slade for a fun experience that really excited the kids! Skype is such a great way to get some really cool opportunities!

Edited to add: Mrs. Slade sent us a picture she took of her end of the session! See it below. Thanks again!!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Tesselations in Nature

A few weeks ago I talked about a tesselation project I was planning with a 4th grade class. They finished it yesterday! This was a good, quick project and a good way to evaluate their understanding of a math concept in writing. Students were each assigned a type of tesselation found in nature, then the cropped in on it and explained why (or why not) it was made of polygons. They were to use math vocabulary and be clear in their explanation that they understood the concept. We spent about 15 minutes on one day reviewing sites to find pictures on such as Creative Commons and Edupic so that we can use the pictures, and one day for about an hour making the powerpoints. So in a very short time, we had a good use of copyright friendly images, math review and assessment, writing using information to support your case, using picture toolbar tools in powerpoint to crop the picture, and they are going to share them as a class to guess what they are. That covered a lot in a short project! To add on in future projects, I would maybe also have them research the topics a little too, but we wanted short and sweet to focus on math this time. Here are some of their end results.









Edited to add: I created a Livebinder of my sources or  you can see it below.