Saturday, November 9, 2013

Frog Research to End Marty McGuire

As part of the Global Read Aloud, our 1st graders read Marty McGuire. I was nervous that the book would be a little bit over their heads, but the students did a great job. I am also very thankful to their teachers for volunteering to read aloud the book in their classrooms and to let me do the fun connecting in the library.

To wrap up the project this week, the first graders used Britannica Online to research frogs, since frogs are Marty's favorite animal. We started with a sheet to take notes on that looked like this:


The students were able to listen and follow along with the article on Britannica using their iPads. I love that the read-aloud feature works! As they read, they would pause the article and write down the facts they learned. Some kids had a FULL sheet of notes, I was so impressed!

Then, I showed them how to use Educreations to insert photos and to record their notes. Educreations isn't perfect, but I do love the final products. 

And here they are! I think these all turned out really well, and the kids had a great time watching them in class on Friday.
























Saturday, November 2, 2013

1st Quarter Newsletter

Our first quarter came to an end 2 weeks ago. One of my goals for this school year was to complete a library newsletter to send home with K-6 elementary students each quarter. It took me awhile, partially due to not saving the first one I created, but it is finished!