Wild Discoveries, Wacky New Animals

You just never know if you are going to run into at a conference!

After our session was over it was lunch time and boy was I hungry. We did a quick pack up, abandoned it all in the room and headed to the lunch. We ended up sitting at a table with author Heather L. Montgomery. We started a conversation with her and she told us she was an author from Alabama and she began telling us about her book. Sarah immediately recognized it from last years book fair. It's called Wild Discoveries Wacky New Animals. How cool is that frog on the cover?

I went to Heather's website http://www.heatherlmontgomery.com/ and found a wealth of teacher resources to go with this book. On her website you can find

* A list of book pairs to go with Wild Discoveries

* A 40-page "Wild About Learning Unit"  (Word or .pdf files) that is aligned to the Common Core.

* Youtube video links to videos of some of the animals.

* "Which is the Wackiest?" survey and bar graph of results.

* Interview of Heather Montgomery talking about her this book.

All of this information is found on the homepage of her website...just scroll on down.

It turns out that the Scholastic Book Fair booth had the book on sale for $3.99 so I quickly snatched a copy. Looking it over I don't think it would be great for my young students. I would recommend it for grades 4 and up. I do see some things that I could adapt from the book. I particularly liked how the left side of each page gives the name of the animal in large bold print, the scientific name, the animals size, what it's role in nature is and where it was discovered. 

The animals role in nature as either a carnivore or herbivore are terms I can easily teach my students. It brings to mind Brod Bagert's "Food Cheer" poem which can be found in his book The Gooch Machine. My kids love learning that cheer!

Due to Fall Break plans I was unable to attend Heather's sessions on Saturday. I thought there were some really good sessions on Saturday so I was bummed to miss her presentation and others. I am passionate about science and I can only imagine her session would have been great to attend. I did visit her website and found her fees to visit a school aren't too costly so I am thinking about maybe having her visit.

TASL Conference

Some of you might be stopping by my blog after attending our "Cool Collaborations II and the Common Core" session at our recent TASL conference. Thanks so much for attending and stopping by my blog.

As you can see my blog posts aren't as frequent as I would like them to be but I hope to change that soon.

I picked up a couple more cool books at the Scholastic Book Fair booth so I hope to cover one a week. I'm beginning to think Scholastic may want to put us on their payroll after Sarah's idea sold out copies of the non-fiction Fly Guy books.
- Please follow my blog and you'll get updates when I make a post.

It's Flat Stanley Time!

Probably my all time favorite project I've done has to be the Flat Stanley project. My group of 19 campers is about to undertake the process this Friday. I posted a request for hosts on LM_NET and had a fabulous response. I had to turn quite a few librarians away which always breaks my heart, especially when I see where they are writing from. I wish I could do this with all of my second grade students.

I had probably 5 responses from people who were unfamiliar with the concept. I directed them to these two websites.
www.flatstanley.com
www.flatstanleyproject.com

Both websites give ideas, reproducibles and pictures. I even saw a Flat Stanley photographed with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle. Wonder what the secret service thought about him!

Our take on it is a little different. My students actually create a paper doll that looks like themselves. We write learn letter writing skills and write a friendly letter to the library telling them a little bit about themselves.

If you want to try this project out here are some things I've learned from doing it.
* Photocopy your dolls or Flat Stanley on a heavy cardstock paper.
* If possible laminate them!
* Include a letter to the host telling them about your school and town and what your expectations of them are.
* Include your mailing address in this correspondence.
* If you are a member of LM_NET then ask there for hosts. I'm sure you will get a great response!
* Stay in communication with the hosts. I e-mail them when the dolls are mailed and ask that they let me know when they arrive. I keep all this recorded on a master list of addresses. I also ask them to e-mil me when the doll is heading back to our school.
* Keep requirements simple. I ask that they keep a journal and include some pictures. You'll find that lots of people will go above and beyond which is always very kind of them.
* Make your students write a thank you note. I have my students do this on a postcard. The picture usually has a map of our state on it.

Unfortunately you can expect that some people won't return the doll :( I've never had a 100% success rate which makes me sad, not to mention the kids. I had a fellow LM_NET member offer me some good advice today. When she does the project she has some back up contacts. She will create another Flat Stanley doll and send it off to that school and they will have a quick turnover. For the kids I think it's more important that they receive some correspondence then nothing at all.

I'm excited to find out about the adventures of our dolls!

2013 Outstanding Science Trade Books for K-12 Students

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a restful holiday break.

As mentioned in my December post the lists are coming out. Today I have the 2013 list of Outstanding Science Trade Books for K-12 link
http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ostb2013.aspx

So what books do you own? Unfortunately I don't own many though I do have quite a selections from Nic Bishop and Steve Jenkins. Two great authors in the science field.

I do want to point out one that I just added to my Follett list. It happens to be the second to the last so you may not make it that far down.
What Color Is My World? : The Lost History of African-American Inventors by
 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld. Candlewick Press. Quoted from the list
"Integrated with technology, engineering and social studies, this book highlights unknown inventors. Useful for Invention units and STEM curricula. The variety of inventors and inventions will be appreciated."
With Black History Month approaching this may be one to buy quickly.

Next month I have scheduled an in-service for my teacher's  on science materials in the library. Thanks to two grants I won this year I have expanded our Folkmanis puppet collection and will be getting a slew of Smithsonian Backyard books to pair with the matching puppets. Another grant has purchased the AV2 Science Books that are on the K-2 level. I can't wait to share with them all of the great science related tools that I can offer them!

Edublog Awards

I recently came across a great blog called Kleinspiration "Connecting Tradition and Technology to Inspire the Seeds we Plant Today" after attending a webinar hosted by the blogger Erin Klein
www.kleinspiration.com/
I highly recommend that you check it out. I have found many useful ideas here.

Today's post talked about the "Edublog Awards". Kleinspiration has been nominated in 2 categories. I headed on over to vote and decided to print out the list of nominees for all categories. If these are the best of the best than I wanted to take note of them.
https://edublogawards.com/
- December 3rd "Voting is Open" post.

My plan is to slowly check out the nominees to see if there are any other hidden gems out there on the internet that might give me some more ideas. Some of the voting categories include
- Best Student Blog
- Best Ed Tech Blog
- Best Teacher Blog
- Best Library/Librarian Blog
- Twitter Hashtag
- Free Web Tool
- Wikis in Education

- Most Influential Post *

May I suggest reading this article "What the Kardashians Taught Me About Reading Instruction (No, for real)

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2012/09/what_the_kardashians_taught_me.html

Though my lonely little blog isn't on the list maybe it could be one day...probably with a little more frequent posting on my part :)

NY Times Notable Books of 2012

I am sharing these links that I got from a posting on LM_NET. If you are a librarian and not a member of this listserv you must join immediately. I can't tell you how many times the members have helped me out, quickly, or volunteered for a project I was doing. There are 1000's of members all over the world. It's a great networking opportunity.
http://lmnet.wordpress.com/

So on to the list - NY Times Notable Books of 2012. Here are two that I take special note of since I teach elementary students but there are many more lists.

New York Times Best Notable Children’s Books 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/books/review/notable-childrens-books-of-2012.html
* Out of the picture books listed I've read Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin to my boys and we loved it. 

New York Times Best Books Graphic Novels
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/books/graphic-novels-from-batgirl-to-wrinkle-in-time.html?ref=books

There will be many more lists coming out so it's nice to take a peek at the lists and see what your library owns or what you may need to buy. It always makes me feel good to say "Oh, we already own that". It makes me feel like I'm doing a good job selecting books for my students.

Halloween...my favorite holiday!

In this day and age many teachers are scared (pardon the pun) to read about Halloween.  There are many conflicting opinions about the holiday or some students don't celebrate it. As much as I love the holiday I also try to stay safe.

Each year I focus on a different "scary" topic. I rotate between bats, spiders, and mummies. These are some things that come to mind when I think of Halloween! With just three grade levels a three topic rotation is easy. Bats is the topic of October 2012. Here is a basic rundown of my books and topics.

KINDERGARTEN
Lesson 1 - We listen to Stellaluna on www.storylineonline.net Afterwards we complete a  chart as a group that compares bats to birds. We talk about how they are alike and how they are different.

Lesson 2 - We read Nat the Bat by Susan Laschutza. We talk about echolocation. I found these websites helpful
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/mammals/bat2.htm
Scroll to the echolocation diagram

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp31AsqeggE&feature=fvwrel
Audio of a bat using echolocation - I only play to about the 1:05 mark because she says a cuss word a little later.

Lesson 3 - Littlebat's Halloween Story by Diane Mayr and magazine articles.


FIRST GRADE
Lesson 1 - We fill out 1 KWL Chart as a class. Starting with just the K & W sections..

Lesson 2 - We read Bat in the Boot by Annie Cannon. We talk about echolocation and I use the same websites listed under Lesson 2 in the kindergarten section.

Lesson 3 - We read Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats by Anna Earle.

Lesson 4 - Finish the KWL chart and move on to new topic.


SECOND GRADE
Lesson 1 - Author study of Brian Lies.  I show the students the bat books that the l library owns then they vote on which one they want me to read.

Lesson 2 - We start the lesson discussing fact vs opinion. We read Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats by Anna Earle. After the story we review fact and opinion then I read them a sentence about bats. Students raise their hand to tell me if it's a fact or an opinion.

Lesson 3 - We read Nat the Bat by Susanne Laschutza. We then talk about Megabats vs. Microbats. I show them a flash card with the face of a bat on it. Students raise their hand to classify it as a megabat or microbat. Here is a helpful website
http://mrsgebauer.com/bats/Kinds/kinds.htm

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!