Our first grade students just finished a collaboration project in library, art, and the classroom and it was so much fun! First, we read the book The Wolf in the Snow in the library. This wordless picture book by Matthew Cordell is about a girl in a snowstorm who finds a lost wolf pup. After returning the pup to it's pack, she gets tired and lost. The wolves surround and protect her until her father comes. It's a beautiful, Caldecott Award winning book and is lots of fun to retell.
After reading the book in the library, the students made stick puppets of the girl and the wolf in art class with Mrs. Ryan. They also practiced retelling the story in the classroom. Finally, these past two weeks we recorded students retelling the story using the puppets. Some of the students recorded their stories in art class in front of a snowy background that they made. Other students recorded in the library in front of a green screen (we then put the snowy background in behind the students).
Here is a link to the Flipgrid with all of their videos: https://flipgrid.com/2ffacf0e
Thank you to Andy Plemmons for this amazing idea!
Every year, on February 1st, we celebrate World Read Aloud Day! While it's important to read aloud to students EVERY day, this special day is a celebration of reading with others all around the world.
To celebrate reading and this special day, many authors volunteer their time to offer FREE Skype sessions with teachers and librarians around the world. Author Kate Messner does a fabulous job of organizing a list of authors and making it available to educators.
This year in our library, Harrison students were lucky to be able to connect with others in several different ways!
First graders Skyped with author Julie Segal-Walters! Julie told us about the eight things that writers need (including cozy socks!!) and she read to us her book This is Not a Normal Animal Book.
Junior high students Skyped with author Brooks Benjamin! Brooks led the students in a short activity that showed our students how to find fun ideas for writing stories and answered student questions.
Kindergarten students Skyped with Mrs. Loesch's kindergarten students in Lake Zurich. Mrs. Loesch and I read two Elephant & Piggie books aloud together: Can I Play Too? and My Friend is Sad. It was so fun reading books together!
Several of our fourth grade students had the opportunity to listen to four different authors talk during a Facebook live event hosted by Scholastic. Peter Reynolds, Ross Burach, Carmen Deedy, and Sayantani DasGupta each talked about reading and read aloud from one of their books. Peter Reynolds has a new book coming out soon, Say Something, and it's definitely a book to order!!
Finally, several of our third grade students listened to Rosie Revere Engineer read aloud from one of the astronauts on the space station (not live, but still cool!).
It was an AMAZING day connecting with others and celebrating a love of reading!!
