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Oak Hollow

 

Media Activity for the month of February 2010

 

Recommended Read-a-louds

                                   

Title/Author: Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay up Late by Moe Willems

We love this author and are fortunate to have several of his books.  The younger students (K-2) will “play along” as the author engages them with the pigeons requests for a hot dog, a puppy, or, in this case to stay up late.  When I yawn, as you must when you read this book, several of the students respond with yawns of their own – Its great!

 

Pair & Share Topic: India, the country  (Used for grades 3 – 6)

                       

We have a reading incentive program underway here.  Our library mascot is traveling the globe and sending us letters each week from a new country. 

The location this week is India. Capitol New Delhi, continent of Asia.

It is a land of many people – the second most populated country in the world behind China.  They are known for silks, spices, tea, rice, and cotton.  Their embroidery is beautiful and clothing is distinctive.  The main languages are Hindi and English.  The main religion is Hinduism and many Indians are vegetarians. We showed pictures from our country books and also talked about the importance of Gandhi to this country politically.  They are one of the world’s youngest democracies thanks to Gandhi’s non-violent efforts to uphold the civil rights of people in India. We ask students who this reminds them of and every class brings up Martin Luther King.  We point out that Dr. King was inspired by Gandhi. It is interesting to note that the game Parcheesi and the practice of Yoga both originated in India. We use the globe so the students can get a sense of perspective for the location of each country we travel to with our mascot.

 

Crescent Elementary

We have been reading the book “The Magic Thief” (Beehive Nominee) to grades 3-6 for a couple of months now and the students are really enjoying it. It is about a boy named Conn who is a street urchin and pickpockets to provide a living for himself. He pickpockets a wizards locus magicalicus stone and doesn’t die. (which should happen to anyone who is not a wizard). The wizard, whose name is Nevery, is astonished and intrigued. He agrees to take Conn on as his apprentice on the condition that the boy finds his own stone within a month. A locus stone is used to focus magic and work spells, every wizard has his own stone that works only for him and each stone looks different. Will Conn find his stone in time and how will he know it is his?

We are about two chapters from finding out how and where Conn will find his stone.

I gave each student a sheet of paper with two question on it.

1.       How and where do you think Conn will find his locus stone?

2.       What do you think his locus stone will look like?

I gave those students who wanted to share their ideas, time to read them before we discover the real answers.

 

Crescent Elementary

Charlene Farr

Lone Peak Elementary Angela Helsby

Hi, Because the Winter Olympics are on at the moment, this week we highlighted books on the Olympics and past and present medal winner, such as Michele Kwan & Tara Lipinski, also some of the sports, "A is for Axel" is a great book. The boys loved the books on snowboarding and ice hockey. As many of the students don't remember the Salt Lake Winter Olympics of 2002 I showed them some of the pictures out of the book on this.

For fiction books I picked "Snow" by Uri Shulevitz, this was a Caldecott honor book, and I really love the funny illustrations. (This will be my first time trying to add a picture , I just hope it works.) I showed them at the end Humpty Dumpty and Mother goose. Although not a fiction book I highlighted "Snow is falling" by Franklyn M. Branley.

I really look forward to reading some of your bogs, I think I am in the Winter doldrums, and with all these short weeks I am having a hard time coming up with new ideas.

Crescent Elementary

We have been reading the book “The Magic Thief” (Beehive Nominee) to grades 3-6 for a couple of months now and the students are really enjoying it. It is about a boy named Conn who is a street urchin and pickpockets to provide a living for himself. He pickpockets a wizards locus magicalicus stone and doesn’t die. (which should happen to anyone who is not a wizard). The wizard, whose name is Nevery, is astonished and intrigued. He agrees to take Conn on as his apprentice on the condition that the boy finds his own stone within a month. A locus stone is used to focus magic and work spells, every wizard has his own stone that works only for him and each stone looks different. Will Conn find his stone in time and how will he know it is his?

We are about two chapter from finding out how the where Conn will find his stone.

I gave each student a sheet of paper with two questions on it.

1.       How and where do you think Conn will find his locus stone?

2.       What do you think his locus stone will look like?

I gave those students who wanted to share their ideas, time to read them before we discover the real answers.

Crescent Elementary

Charlene Farr

 

Sunrise Elementary

Title: The night I followed my dog
Author: Nina Laden
This was a fun book to read and the older classes really enjoyed it, especially 5th & 6th.
It is about what a dog does during the night when you think he is in his doghouse ( which doesn't look like anything you built) sleeping.
The way the book is written with different fonts and pictures for words makes it fun to read.

Title: The Sandman
Author: Ralph Fletcher
The Sandman is a story about a little man who discovers Dragon Scale dust can put people to sleep.
So he searches each night to find boys and girls who have a hard time falling asleep and sprinkles
dragon dust in there eyes. It was really a cute story.

Incentives:
Are you having problems in your library with noise control, sloppy shelves, shelf markers not being put away, running etc.
Try an incentive program in your library.
For example this year we decided to decorate our library with Bugs and Bees. Our incentive goes along with it.
When each class comes to the library 2 kids can earn bee bucks. Either the teacher or the librarian looks for kids that are using really good library manners.
Finding a book, sitting at the tables reading quietly, helping push in chairs etc. At the end of library time we tell the class who earned the bee bucks and we have them come up and put them in the little bug catcher we have for each grade. At the end of the month we draw out 2 names for each grade and they come down and choose a book (we recieved through the bookfair) and a small treat. If the class is really noisy and out of control in the library we don't give any to that class. It really works to keep your library under control and it puts the kids in charge of keeping their library nice and neat. They work hard for them and always ask "who got the bee bucks". The teachers seem to enjoy it also because it helps them keep control of their class.

Alta View Elementary

The Winter Olympics are February 12^th –February 28^th.

We decided to do a Reading Olympics starting next week.  We are going to let the students give  a “medal” to the books they read during the month of February.

The Students will choose a medal for the book and write the name of the book on the medal. We have bronze(brown), silver(gray) and gold (yellow)  die cut circles.   Then we will put the medals up on our bulletin board throughout the month. 

We will put an update on the blog at the end of the month and let you know how the students liked this activity.

Altara

Title: "The End" by David LaRochelle

This is a fun Beehive book. It starts at "THE END", with the courtship and marriage of the handsome knight and a clever beautiful princess, and follows the story backwards through a cowardly dragon afraid of bunny rabbits, a large tomato, and a giant that throws tantrums.

We read this book front to back at first, and then had the students help us tell the story the normal way by starting at the back of the book reading forward. The students loved trying to come up with what part of the story was next.

Crescent Elementary

We have been reading the book “The Magic Thief” by Sara Prineas to several of our upper grades. They are really enjoying this book. We have done a few short book talks with them to introduce them to other books similar in content like, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and “Fablehaven”.

With our younger grades we have been reading books about all things winter. (winter sports, winter animals, winter fun etc.) First grade did a wall art display for our library about perky penguins so we brought out all our Tacky the penguin books and read those to first grade. They were disappointed when we had no more Tacky books to read.

Sprucewood Elementary

Mary Had a Little Lamp

This month we shared, “Mary Had a Little Lamp” with our students.  This is one of the Beehive nominated books.  We did a comparison between this book and the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.  The students loved the book.  It was fun to see them compare the two stories.  The students  also pointed out other books that were similar like “Good Night Moon” and “Goodnight Goon”.

 

From Susan

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is coming out as a movie shortly!  It is rated PG.  It looks wonderful.  Watch this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zut7VEdXdmw

Draper

Here is a fun Book and Activity to do for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. go to http://www.storylineonline.net/  pick White Socks Only . Actress Amber Rose Tamblyn will read the book. Here are some activity you car do with it.

LONE PEAK ELEMENTARY

We had fun in December with the new Christmas books, and one week I read the pop-up book "The 12 days of Christmas" by Robert Sabuda. I had the students sing the song, but they could not get past  the fifth day without help (I'm glad I had the book in front of me). The 3rd and 4th grades all wanted to do it again. I also showed them other books with the song in, and we did a comparison, the pop-up was the most requested although I had to tell them it was just a teacher's book. l plan on showing the "America the Beautiful" book later in the year. Angela

Crescent Elementary

 We have a small pre-lit Christmas tree that we use as part of our holiday decorations in the media center. We  have made ornaments to go on that tree that tie in with the library. We took several old catalogs that are sent to our school, the ones that are used for ordering books. We cut out the small pictures that show the cover of the books, mounted those pictures on small pieces of styrofoam cut the size of those pictures, then trimmed the edges of the styrofoam with red ribbon trim. We used small paper clips to shape an ornament hook, poked that into the styrofoam and placed the ornaments on the tree. The children loved looking at them and many of them asked where they could find that book in our library.  

DraperElementary

Title: Santasaurus
grades: all
The students enjoyed this fun book about Christmas with dinosaurs.
Title : Polar Express
grades: all
We did this Christmas favorite as a book on tape. It was fun and the students enjoyed it  alot.
Title: A creature was Stirring
grade: all
This story was very fun. It was the story of the night before Christmas and all so a little boys events that happened on the night before
Christmas.
We also did some lessons.

We talked about the Arctic and Antarctica and did a slide show. The students enjoyed this a lot

Sprucewood

Title:  Pizza, Pigs & Poetry 

Author:  Jack Prelutsky

Grade:   4-6

During December we shared this book by Jack Prelutsky, which is also one of the Utah Beehive Nominees.  Jack Prelutsky shares many ideas on how to write poetry, including some of his own childhood experiences from which he gleaned ideas for his poems.  He offers tips, advice and secrets about writing and provides some fun exercises to help you get started on a poem.  The kids loved hearing the stories that his poems were based on.  If you are a poet, want to become a poet or just want to try to write a poem, you need to read this book. 

Altara's December Blog

Title: "Snowflake Bentley" By Jacqueline Briggs Martin

3-6th grades

This is a fascinating book about the life of one of the first men to photograph snowflakes. It received the Caldecott Medal in 1999. The pictures are wonderful. We paired it with "Snow Crystals", which is the photography book that has William Bentley's work in it. It's fun to look at these old photos of thousands of snowflakes. After reading the book we had paper and scissors out for those students who wanted to cut out a snowflake, which we now have hanging from our ceiling in the media center.

Title: "The Twelve Days of Christmas" By Hillary Knight

1-6th grades (We were just going to do this with the younger grades but decided to include the older grades as well)

This is just the traditional poem/song of the Twelve days of Christmas. While we read the book to the classes we had twelve students standing up in front with a sign that read "A Partridge in a pear tree", "two turtle doves, "three french hens, etc. While we read the book each of the students with the signs on had to do an action that went along with their sign. Partridge in a pear tree had to stand with their arms in a circle above their heads and had to say "Cheep" in a high voice when we read their part. After we read the book we had the whole class stand and sing the last verse with everyone doing all of the actions together. This was a blast, the students loved it.

***We loved the idea of Halloween jokes that one of the other schools did. We don't have any wall space in out media center so we typed up Christmas jokes and taped 3-4 of them on each of our tables.

Altara

I've seen jokes posted in the library, but Altara posted Christmas jokes on the tables in the library.  My personal favorite was: "What do you call Santa's anual barn dance?  A Ho, Ho, Ho Down!

~Susan Huff

Alta View Elementary

Title: The Black Book of Color
Author: Menena Cottin
The response from the students as this book was read was amazing to see! They sat so quiet as their imagination caused some of them to close their eyes. How would they describe colors they had never seen? Their descriptive imaginations blossomed!

Columbia Elementary

This month the PTA at Columbia hosted a bookfair at Barnes and Noble and had authors and an illustrator there.  Greg Newbold who illustrated the book "The Barnyard Night Before Christmas" was the illustrator so we read his book that week.  It is a version of the Night Before Christmas and the kids loved it. Cute story and the pictures are great.  The author of the book is Beth Terrill.