3rd and 4th Graders Use Narrable to Make an Online Story of Forensic Pieces

The theme for Forensics this year was Change.  With only that theme and their teachers, Mr. Hallagen, Mrs. LaRoque and Ms. Thoni as their guide, the students wrote their own pieces.  After lots of work revising and practicing reading their pieces aloud, the students read them at Forensics in front of a judge.  After all of that work the teachers and I wanted the students to do something special with their writing.  We decided to try a new online tool. Narrable.  Narrable allows students to use pictures and their voice to tell a story.

                                

I showed the students a variety of sites to find copyright free images.  They searched for images that would help tell the story of their piece.  They inserted those pictures into Narrable and then recorded themselves reading their piece.  Below are a couple of examples of the Narrables they created.  Enjoy!

Character Trading Cards

Second graders were participating in the Series Reading Club during reader's workshop.  During this book club they were reading lots of books in a series and really getting to know the characters.  The students were then able to understand, predict and critique their books.  Second grade teachers Mrs. Woyahn and Mrs. Siewert wanted their students to show all their great learning about characters.  The two classrooms share eight iPads so we thought we'd use the iPad app Trading Cards by Read Write Think.  The app really gets them thinking deeply about their character and allows them to make connections to their own lives.

  I took small groups of students during their reader's workshop to work on their trading cards.  Our students all have Google accounts so it makes sharing digital products done on iPads very easy.  The students emailed their trading card to themselves and then uploaded the jpeg file to their Google Drive.  I had the students share their images with me and I put them together into a Google presentation.  Mrs. Woyhan and Mrs. Siewert were then able to embed that presentation onto their Google teacher site for everyone to see.


Take a look at their hard work!


Mrs. Siewert's Class

Mrs. Woyahn's Class

Celebrating World Read Aloud Day

Imagine a world where everyone can read...  

We celebrated World Read Aloud Day at Magee last week. World Read Aloud Day is a day to show everyone that all kids have a right to read and write. We should all celebrate that right!

Magee staff each chose their favorite book to read aloud.  We had some staff members have a hard time with that!  It's hard to pick just one!










Students then traveled to someone different than their classroom teacher.  Students listened to the read aloud and then got to work creating a quilt square for our Magee Story Quilt.

Each student made a square that listed their favorite story.  They then got to decorate the square however they liked.  The quilt squares were collected and we now have the Magee Story Quilt proudly displayed in our front lobby!

Winter Fun with First Grade

If you live in Southeastern Wisconsin you are well aware that we have had a long, tough winter.  The first graders and I decided to embrace it and celebrate winter in Wisconsin!  We have been doing all sorts of activities about snow and winter for the past few weeks.  One of my favorite books about winter is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation has a fabulous website.  On the site is an animated version of the story and lots of games.  The first graders really enjoyed the story and playing the games.

There is another great site I discovered, Snow Days.  With a few clicks of the mouse, students are able to create a snowflake and then share it for everyone to see.  The first graders were so excited to see the snowflake they created floating down the screen and then see all of their classmate's snowflakes as well!

Most recently we read two more great books for this time of year, Snowmen at Night and Snowmen all Year by Caralyn Buehner.



In the fall the first graders made an online book based on the story, For Just One Day.  While planning with first grade teachers Mrs. Trost and Mrs. Coss, we decided we would like the first graders to do another book together.  This time we would challenge them to write a longer story.  Each student wrote a story called Snowmen at School.  They used their Google account, Kerpoof for the illustrations and I used FlipSnack Edu to put them all together into an online book.  Click below to read their stories!

Mrs. Trost's Class

Mrs. Coss' Class

Now that we are done with our winter activities, Spring can come anytime now!

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge: Week 2

The World Read Aloud Challenge for week two was to answer the following questions myself and then ask the same five questions to a student. I asked David, a 4th grader to help me out. He did a great job!
Question One:  I think everyone in the world should read…

Me: Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  I can't think of another book that does such a great job of encouraging kindness.  It is a beautiful story that everyone should read; especially children.

David: Charlotte's Web because it is a classic and E.B. White is a great author.

Question Two:  If I could listen to anyone in the world read aloud to me it would be…

Me:  Mo Willems.  I would love to see Mo Willems and hear him read his books.  He is my favorite author for young children.  I've heard him read aloud a little bit online and I always want to her more.

David: Bob Uecker because he has a really good announcing voice and it would sound cool for him to read aloud to me.

Question Three:  When I read aloud, my favorite character to impersonate is…

Me:  the Pigeon from Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.  The Pigeon is so fun!

David: Percy Jackson because he is brave and takes chances to save his friends.

Question Four:  The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf (or e-reader) is…

Me:  Adriana Trigiani.  She is my favorite adult author to read.  I also have a lot of children's books on my bookshelf.  I love to read them and I have two kids at home that love to read them, too.

David: Rick Riordan; he has written some of my favorite books I've ever read.

Question Five:  My favorite part about reading aloud or being read to is...

Me: the children's reactions to the stories they are hearing.  There is nothing better than a group of children loving a story they are hearing.

David: hearing the end of the book because you've been waiting to hear how it ends.

Kindergarten's Version of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

My favorite author to share with Kindergarten is Mo Willems.  We read lots of his books and explore his websites,  Pigeon Presents and Go Mo.  Besides hearing favorites like The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, Elephant and Piggie and That is Not a Good Idea, students also get to hear from Mo himself from his many video clips.  We also read Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed and learned all about those strange little animals, naked mole rats.

 We love all of Mo's books, but the favorite character is always the Pigeon.  We wanted to honor the Pigeon with our own version of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.  We also wanted the kidergartners to do some digital writing.   During their writer's workshop, students filled in this sentence: Don't let the ________ drive the _____________.







We then used one of their favorite online tools, Kerpoof, to illustrate their page.  Using FlipSnack Edu, I put all of their pages together to create an online book for each class.  Take a look and enjoy!

Mrs. Hansen's Class

Mrs. Gross' Class

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge: Week One

World Read Aloud Day is March 5th.  Magee participated a couple of years ago and I hope we can do it again this year.  I read about the World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) Blogging Challenge from one of my favorite blogs to follow, Van Meter Library Voice.  Each week there is a blogging challenge related to reading aloud.  As a library media specialist and book lover, I accepted the challenge!

Here is week one's challenge: What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?

I have memories of my mom reading to me when I was younger. The memory that really sticks out to me is my older cousin, Sue reading to me and my sister when she was babysitting us. My sister and I had a large collection of the Berestain Bears books. I loved those books! Sue would start out by reading us one of those books and then my sister and I would bug her until she read us a couple more. Now those books were not very short, but Sue would not complain about reading them. I think she liked it as much as we did!

This year I hope to have Magee participate in WRAD. Two years ago we had all staff members (custodian, school secretary, gym, music and art teachers included) read to kids and do an art project based on ideas from the WRAD website. There are many activities and resources on that site. I plan to work with Magee's reading specialist to come up with a fun activity to celebrate reading aloud!