Preparing for Tammi Sauer's Visit

Our school is preparing for an amazing author visit! I have been reading two or three books per class per week for the last 2-3 weeks and talking about the plot, lesson, and characters in the stories. Students are in love with the books!

We had an author visit from Nikki Loftin last week, and I will post about that as soon as I have time. I just wanted to post a few cute pictures that students have made for Tammi's visit.

Here are a few!

I hope you all enjoyed the pictures! I'll write about Tammi's visit some time next week. It's going to be AWESOME!!!

Duck! Rabbit! GRA15 Rosenthal Author Study

Our library is taking part in the Global Read Aloud this month by doing an author study on author, Amy Krouse Rosenthal. We are reading books by Ms. Rosenthal and learning about things like point of view and perspective.

We compared the book Duck! Rabbit!, with a Mo Willems book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, to determine "who's telling the story?", and from whose perspective the story is being told.

After we read both books, and discussed point of view and perspective, students were given white boards and markers and asked to draw which animal they thought was portrayed in the book, Duck! Rabbit!, and to tell which animal they thought the character was (duck or rabbit) by using the text in the book. Here are some great pictures of them at work!

Kinder Learning in the Library

Kindergarten students have been reviewing their letters and letter sounds in the library the last week or so. We have sung the "ABC" song, read a book called Al Pha's Bet, and even formed some letters with our bodies! Here are some pictures to show the letters!

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

That's as far as we had time to go! The kiddos really enjoyed singing and figuring out how to make a letter with their body!

Gone Fishing...a Sequoyah Nominee

I haven't posted in a long time, but this book spurred my desire to write again.

Gone Fishing is a book by Tamera Will Wissinger and illustrated by Matthew Cordell. I showed my students the author interview on the Perma-Bound video made by our wonderful Brown Brothers this past week! Tamera's stories of going fishing brought back many happy memories for me because my Dad used to take my sisters and me fishing when we were kids. He still enjoys this hobby all these years later.

Tamera's use of different poetry forms to tell the story of a boy, his dad, and his sister's family fishing trip is inspiring! At the end of the book, she lists all the forms of poetry she used in the book so that kids (or teachers) can go back and reference the poetry forms as well as poetry techniques she used.

Teachers could use this book as a read aloud and show some images and videos to kids to build their knowledge of fishing as a hobby. Then they could use the techniques and forms Tamera discusses in the back of the book to have students write their own poems about their hobbies.

I can think of about a dozen ways I plan to use this book in my library lessons this year. Here is a picture of me and my sister, Cindy, when we got back home after a fishing trip. We sure look proud - maybe as proud as Sam and Lucy in Gone Fishing!

New Books in the Kerr Cougars Library!!!!

We were extremely excited to have Christmas again after returning from Christmas break! My assistant, Mrs. Holcomb, and I agreed that getting new books was just like getting Christmas gifts. We received 9 heavy boxes of new books and slowly went through each and every one, labeling and marking them for Reading Counts quizzes and lexile levels. It took us all of the first week back and some of the next week before we got them all done. WHEW!

Because of testing being done in the library for Kindergartners, I wasn't able to hold regular classes in the library last week. I did the next best thing, which was to take the library to the students! I loaded up a little shelving cart with all new books and did multiple booktalks in every classroom. Boy, are those kids thirsty for the new books! This week, we've hardly been able to keep a new book on the shelf. We made it easy for kids to find the new books by locating them in a central shelving area for circulation. It's fun to have students come in and excitedly ask for certain books by title.

This week during classes for 1st-3rd grades, I've done booktalks on a couple of my favorite author/illustrators whose books we purchased for the library. Now, the kids are chomping at the bit to get these books!

Wonderful books illustrated and/or written by Dan Santat.

We can't wait for new books by Tammi Sauer!

Musical Kids at Kerr Elementary School

Kerr Elementary has a band program done by our band teacher, Ms. Thrun. I was sitting in the library before Christmas and heard band music. I was completely impressed by the students' playing ability at only the halfway point in the school year! Here are a couple of pictures I took of the students playing their instruments for a Kindergarten class. I hope to attend a band concert soon!

More Book Fair and Bob the Elf News

Yippee! The book fair has ended and we made our sales goal! I am hoping that we will be able to have enough money to invite an author to visit either in the spring or next fall. We had a couple of generous teachers who purchased books for other teachers on their wish lists and even helped out a few students that were short on a few cents to buy their books. We also had a wonderful volunteer from Reading Partners, Klarice Dant, who helped out at the book fair: setting up, breaking down, and assisting children with book selection and purchases!

I tried to get lots of teachers and kids to purchase these sweet stuffed animal characters, but only convinced myself and one little girl. I bought Fly Guy!

Bob, our resident Elf on the Shelf, has been busy watching over students and teachers this week.He showed up in the cafeteria one day and yesterday he was in the gym!

 Ms. Hoskins even found him today!