The Animals' Santa by Jan Brett

This week, our second and third grade classes started a mini author study unit on Jan Brett.  Many of her stories revolve around winter and Christmas so this is the perfect season to learn about Jan Brett and her beautiful books!  We kicked off the unit by reading her brand new book The Animals' Santa.  In this simple, but gorgeous book, the animals are telling Little Snowshoe Rabbit about the Animals' Santa who comes each year to deliver gifts.  Each animal thinks the Animals' Santa must be a different type of animal (bear, moose, etc).  However, Little Snowshoe doesn't believe there is a Santa because none of the animals have ever seen tracks left in the snow from him.  In the end, Little Snowshoe, and all of the rest of the animals, learn just who the Animals' Santa really is!

In classic Jan Brett form, each page in the book has side panels that add to the story.  After reading the book, we learned more about Jan Brett and where she got her inspiration for her story.  Second and third grade is the perfect age for discovering Jan Brett's magic as the students were captivated by the book!  We can't wait to read more of her books, and learn more about her, in the coming weeks! 

Lunch reading: The One and Only Ivan

Last year, I began reading to some of our students during their lunchtime.  The reason I started doing this was because there were some students who were participating in our Battle of the Books program who would have had a difficult time reading some of the books on the list.  At first, the lunch reading was only open to students participating in our Battle of the Books or book club programs.  However, so many other students wanted to listen!!  I knew I was on to something big!

This school year, I opened the program up to anyone who wanted to listen while they ate their lunch.  At our school, students in grades 3, 4, and 5 eat lunch together in two big adjoining rooms.  With the support of our principal and our lunch ladies, we made one of the two rooms my reading room on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.  Any student who was willing to sit quietly and listen to me read while they ate their lunch was invited to eat in my room.  We ended up with over half of our students in grades 3-5 participating!!  Sure, a few had to be removed for talking after repeated warnings, but that was definitely the exception. 

The book I chose was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.


If you have not read this book yet, I highly recommend it!  It's loosely based on the true story of a gorilla who was plucked from his home in Africa and placed in a cage in a shopping mall.  After many years, he was finally rescued and sent to the zoo in Atlanta.  The writing is beautiful and the story is compelling. 

This book turned out to be the perfect book for this read aloud for many reasons.  First of all, the story is engaging.  The students love animal stories and especially ones that have happy endings.  Also, this book has very short, one to three page, sections.  This was perfect because we only had about 10-12 minutes of reading per day.  Since the sections were so short, we never had to end in the middle of one.  This book is on two of the Illinois reader's choice award lists: Bluestem and Rebecca Caudill.  Finally, even though it took us over two months to read, the students never lost interest.

We finished reading the story last week and the students clapped and cheered at the end!  What a great journey we all took together.  Today, I read Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate.


This beautiful picture book was the perfect wrap-up to our reading time together as it tells the story about the real Ivan.

I can't wait until after winter break when we begin our next book.  Stay tuned to find out what it is!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week, in celebration of Thanksgiving, some of our third and fourth grade classes heard "Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving" by Laurie Halse Anderson during library time.



I love to read lesser known, more obscure facts, about historical events!  Did you know that we almost lost Thanksgiving??  The celebration of Thanksgiving was declining in the early 1700's.  In this picture book, we learn about a woman named Sarah Hale who lobbied to have Thanksgiving become a national holiday.  After Sarah wrote to four different U.S. Presidents asking them to sign it into law, and they all refused, Sarah didn't give up!  The country was in shambles when she wrote to President Abraham Lincoln suggesting that a national holiday giving thanks was just what the country needed.  President Lincoln and agreed and Sarah's dream came true!  Not only did our students learn about Sarah Hale, but they also learned about the power of the pen and to never give up!!  We really enjoyed this story!

Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Family Reading Night

On Thursday evening, we celebrated the annual Illinois Family Reading Night at Harrison School.  Each year, we do something a little different.  This year, we used the theme "Reading Under the Stars" which related to our summer reading program that we had.  

For the first part of the evening, we had four readers who each read one picture book out loud to our students.

First, Mrs. Ruzika, a former Harrison kindergarten, teacher read A is for Musk Ox by Erin Cabatingan.  In this hilarious picture book, the musk ox is tired of being placed in the middle of the alphabet book so he lobbies to be used for almost every letter of the alphabet!  We might have learned a little about the musk ox animal too!!

Next, Mrs. Szara, one of our resource teachers, read The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett.  In The Princess and the Pig, there is a crazy mix-up of a baby princess and a piglet.  It's the sort of thing that happens in books all the time!

After that, our principal, Mrs. Huff, read My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza.  Is it REALLY the wolf's lucky day?  

Finally, we were fortunate to have one of our school board members, Gregg Kuretski, read The Monster Who Ate My Peas by Danny Schnitzlein.  In this story, the boy doesn't want to eat his peas so he makes a deal with the monster who comes to eat them for him.  How much will he have to give up?

We all really enjoyed these funny stories!

After the stories, the family each created a poster depicting their favorite family book.  We have some really creative families at Harrison!  Here are a few pictures of our families working on the posters and their finished products:

Each child who came went home with a fun flashlight and a free new book to keep!  Thank you to all of the families who came and to all of the volunteers who made the night special!

Global Read Aloud Week 6

Wow!  We just finished the last week of the Global Read Aloud program and it has been a great journey!  We made so many connections with classes all over the world while reading the wonderfully creative books written by Peter H. Reynolds.

We finished the program with two Skype sessions and a third on the way next week.  This week, the third grade students from Mrs. Kuziel's class Skyped with a class from Evergreen Park, IL.  We talked about which Peter H. Reynolds books we liked best and showed each other some of the projects that we made.

Also, the second grade students from Mrs. Gieseke's class Skyped with a second grade class from Long Island, New York.  They showed us some of their amazing Going Places creations along with their beautiful Sky Color mural!

 

The students from Mrs. Ecklund's second grade class will be Skyping with a different class from Long Island next week.  That gave us a chance to finish reading the final two Peter H. Reynolds books that we hadn't read yet:

 

A huge thank you to Pernille Ripp for organizing the Global Read Aloud program!  We can't wait to participate again next year!

Global Read Aloud Week 5

This week for the Global Read Aloud Program, we read Going Places by Peter H. Reynolds.

Going Places is a story about teamwork and about thinking outside the box.  In the story, every student gets the same kit with the same instructions to make a race car for the "Going Places" race.  However, Rafael and Maya think outside the box and come up with something amazing! 

Before reading the story, our third grade students from Ms. Kuziel's class contributed to this Padlet from Mrs. Matysow's class in Warsaw, Poland with our predictions:

Created with Padlet

Then, our students commented on a Tackk created by the students in Mrs. Raisutis' class from Flossmoor, IL.

Finally, after reading the story, our students had a chance to use their own creative juices!  Each student was given the same materials to use: 4 large marshmallows, 9 small marshmallows, 3 straws, 25 toothpicks, colored paper, scissors, and pencils.  Here are some of their creations!

Some of the creations were: a robot, a dinosaur, a snowman, and a boat.  What a fun project! We have some really creative students at Harrison School!!

Book Hooks

Over the past couple of weeks, our fifth grade students created Book Hooks in the library.  What is a Book Hook?  It is a very short, usually one sentence or phrase, advertisement or "hook" for a book.  Each student chose a book that they read recently that they liked.  Then, they had to think of a short hook to entice other students to want to read the book.  The hook could be a question or it could be something interesting/exciting about the book.  The challenge for some students is to keep it short and simple.  The students used this document to help organize their thoughts and complete the project:

Book Hook Instructions

The students used our iPads and the Keynote app to create their Book Hook slide.  The slide has a picture of the book, the "Hook", the call number (so other students can find the book easily in the library) and the student's name (optional).  Once they finished creating the slide, they then took a screenshot of it.  The Book Hooks are displayed on a screen mounted in our library.  Here are a few examples:

This is an easy, fun way to have the students use technology to promote books!

Global Read Aloud Week 3

This week, the book that we read for the Global Read Aloud program was ish by Peter H. Reynolds.

   
ish is about a boy who loves to draw but becomes discouraged when his brother makes fun of one of his drawings.  When he finds out that his little sister has been hanging his crumpled up drawings on her bedroom wall, be begins to realize that his drawings don't have to be perfect.

Here is a Tackk that I created to share our ish artwork with other classes.  Enjoy!

 

Library Organization and Flexible Spaces

We recently had some new shelving installed at Harrison School.  The timing wasn't the most convenient (October-when school was in session) but it was so worth it! Our bookshelves had been overflowing!!  Now that all of the books fit on the shelves (at least until May when all of the books will have to be returned), we were finally able to add some organizational features that will hopefully make it easier for the students to find the books that they want.  Perhaps some of these ideas will be useful to other teacher-librarians out there...

First off, we added several shelves to our easy reader section. This allowed us more space to add shelf signs indicating different popular fiction and non-fiction easy reader sections.  We chose topics that our students seem to ask for the most.

The shelf signs are made from cardboard magazine boxes from Ikea with colored duck tape.  It was cheap and they were easy to make. 

The next thing we added was shelf labels for the series of books in our general fiction section.

For these labels, I printed out the title of the series along with a picture of one of the covers of books in the series.  Then I used contact paper to attach it to the top of the shelf in front of our books.  Our shelves are pretty deep so this works well for us.  This should make it easier for students to find the series they are looking for.

Finally, here are some general pictures of our library:

We are a PK-8 building so our YA (middle school) section is separated from the rest.  Each section is color coded with a different color (colored duck tape on the magazine boxes for the alphabet/Dewey sections).  The sections are: general non-fiction, general fiction, easy readers, and young adult.

All of our tables are on wheels and the tops fold vertical for easy moving if we need to clear the area for an assembly.  The chairs are also on wheels and they stack.

Finally, we have our cozy reading rug and our booths.  The kids LOVE reading in the booths and it's a great place for staff members to work with a small group of students.  

Our new and improved library space is fantastic for reading, lessons with entire classes, small group work, and assemblies!  What are some of your favorite features of your library?

GRA14: I'm Here Paper Airplanes Around the World Project

Here is the finished video from Mr. Balcom.  Harrison School is at about the 3 minute mark.  How fun!!

Global Read Aloud Week 2!

This week, Harrison School participated in the second week of the Global Read Aloud Program! The Peter H. Reynolds book that we read was I'm Here.

I'm Here is about a boy who presumably has autism and who doesn't like the loud recess noise. While sitting off to the side by himself, he makes a paper airplane and sends it flying. A girl finds the airplane and returns it to him with a smile. Could he have found a new friend? To go along with this book, I started a Google presentation to share with other schools. Each school added a slide describing ways that students can make sure everyone feels included at school. Here is the finished presentation that our third grade students helped with:

A paper airplane plays a big part in the book I'm Here. Our second grade students wrote things they can say to help someone else feel included on sheets of paper. Some of their ideas were: "Do you want to play with me?", "Let's go play somewhere quiet" and "Do you want to be my friend?". They then turned their papers into paper airplanes. Mr. Balcom, a technology coordinator from another school, is putting together a video with students across the world throwing their paper airplanes to other students in other schools around the world. I will show the finished video when it is finished. Harrison students had so much fun participating!!

Global Read Aloud Week 1

Welcome to the Harrison Library Blog...I'm so glad you're here!  The purpose of this blog is to inform others of all of the wonderful things happening in the Harrison School Library.  Also, blogging is a great way to reflect on lessons and gather feedback from others.  So, check back often and feel free to leave feedback!


  

Harrison School is proudly participating in the Global Read Aloud program! With this exciting program, students from all around the world are reading the same book at the same time and connecting with each other in various ways.   This past week was the first week of the program and most of our 2nd and 3rd grade students read The North Star by Peter H. Reynolds.  The students were excited because they were already familiar with Peter H. Reynolds from when we participated in the International Dot Day back in September.  If you haven't read The North Star yet, the book is about finding your own journey and following your own dreams.  After we finished reading the book, the students had LOTS of predictions about what might happen next for the boy's journey in the book.

I created a Padlet for the book and shared it with others participating in the Global Read Aloud program.  If you are not familiar with Padlet, it is basically like an electronic sticky note and it is one of the easiest programs to use.  Students from 11 different schools from across the United States and Canada posted their dreams and thoughts onto our Padlet!!  How cool is that??

Created with Padlet

In addition,  our new friends in Grand Rapids, MI in Mrs. Gauck's classroom created a very cool Tackk about the book which both of our 2nd grade classrooms responded to.   A Tackk is an easy way to create a beautiful webpage or poster and can be shared with others to collaborate or comment on.

I can't wait to see where the Global Read Aloud takes us next week!!