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!