This week I introduced my students to Epic! Epic! is an application with over 10,000 high quality books that students can read or hear read to them. The best part is that the students can choose their book preferences ahead of time so that books that are of interest to them appear on their book shelves. Some students prefer to read paper books, but for those that prefer digital, Epic! is a great option.
We Are OK, Too!
This week as part of the Global Read Aloud we read The OK Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
The students thought about the things that they were “OK” at and tweeted about those things. You can check what we are all OK at in this Storify, but here are a couple of examples.
Pumpkins, Goblins and Ghouls
Making Comics
This week, as part of the Global Read Aloud, we read Exclamation Mark. We talked about when we use exclamation marks and then the students all used an app called Book Creator to make a very short comic. All of the comics have exclamation marks! You can see each student’s creation on their blog. Here are a couple to tantalize you.
The Mask Messenger
This week we had Chris Sigurdson at our school to present “The Mask Messenger”. He used many different masks to create characters and showed us how he used his body and his words to create a character. Here are two of his characters. It was a great introduction to the drama we will be doing this year.
Making Robots
After what seemed like many days of waiting, it was finally time to make our robots. The learning was messy (as it often is), but so much fun! The students had great ideas about what their robots could do and worked hard to make their visions work. Check their individual blogs on the right to see their final products and to hear them describe what their robot can do.
Just Look What Happened When We Took Off the Tape!
Wednesday Was a Big Day!
Did you know that Wednesday was Back to the Future Day? Several of the students dressed up for the day.
Some of the staff looked pretty terrific as well…
Photo by Pat Acker
Our school has been collecting food for the food bank. Together we collected over 700 pounds! After a group picture, we all helped to pass it down the line to the waiting trailer. You can see the joy the students had in helping in this way. The generosity of our school community never ceases to impress me.
The Global Read Aloud
For the past couple of weeks, our class has been involved in the Global Read Aloud. This year, the picture book author we are studying is Amy Krause Rosenthal. Classes all over the world are using the same book.
Last week, the book we talked about was called Chopsticks. It inspired us to see how many thing we could do with one chopstick or with two. Drumming was an obvious and very popular choice.
The students took their chopsticks home to see what else they could find to do with them.
This week, the book we read was Duck! Rabbit!
We talked about clouds and the shapes we have seen in them. Then, we made our own pictures based on Ms. Rosethal’s book.
We also had a Skype call with Ms Lirenman’s class in Surrey to show them our pictures and to talk about the book.