Happy Camper Book Fair

We just ended our spring book fair. Scholastic's spring book fair theme is Happy Camper Book Fair: S'more fun with books! Our decorations included a tree and tent inside the media center. And a waterfall, RV, and several critters on the outside. 

After my volunteers and I set up the fair, I held a teacher preview. We served hot dogs, chips, and soft drinks. We also served bear claws. Teachers browsed the new titles and created their wish lists during the preview. Our Scholastic representative came to the teacher preview and gave us five $5 certificates for door prizes.

This fair, my students and teachers are most excited about Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio in paperback and Making Bombs for Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. We are looking forward to adding s'more books to our collection with our profits!

David Biedrzycki Author Visit

Author/illustrator David Biedrzycki visited my school on March 31! His book, Breaking News: Bear Alert, won the Georgia Children's Book Award in 2016. Bear Alert is a hilarious picture book about two bears who make their way from the forest to a city, where they coincidentally foil a couple of burglars' plans. The book is loaded with references to storybook bears, such as Winnie the Pooh and Paddington.

Before Mr. Biedrzycki's visit, I invited all of the kindergarten through second grade classes into the media center for a storytime. We reread Bear Alert and some of his other books, such as Breaking News: Bears to the Rescue, Ace Lacewing: Bug Detective, and Santa's New Jet.

Mr. Biedrezycki's presentation is one of the best I have seen from a visiting author. During his presentation, he summarized Bear Alert, pointing out several bear references in the illustrations that I had not noticed, even after reading the book dozens of times. Before the presentation, he took a picture of me acting scared and inserted the picture into the picture where the bears walk into the diner and surprise the patrons. The kids went wild when they saw my picture in the page from the book! He also showed students how he creates art in Photoshop by drawing a beetle.

The presentation was very inspiring for our students. I had at least a dozen students come to the media center in the days after the presentation to show me the writer's notebook they started or how they drew a beetle modeled after Mr. Biedrzycki's.

2017 Georgia Children's Book Award Winners

This year's Georgia Children's Picture Book Award winner is Gaston written by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Christian Robinson. Gaston was also the winning book (by a huge margin!) at my school. My students and teachers loved this sweet story about a poodle and a bulldog who were switched at birth. 

This year's Georgia Children's Book Award winner is Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar.

Although my students enjoyed Fuzzy Mud, our school winner is The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.  

First Grade Introduction to Research

To prepare my first grade students for their first big research project, we recently completed a smaller research project together in the library. I chose iguanas as our topic, since animal research is common in first grade. I started by asking students what they already know about iguanas.  Many students confused chameleons with iguanas but most knew that iguanas are a type of reptile.

We logged in to Pebble Go and read the article about iguanas. At the end of each page, we stopped and reviewed what we learned. Then we collectively decided on the most important fact from the page and wrote it on a graphic organizer (below).

Iguana Facts from Jennifer Lewis

We also read several books about iguanas and compared the information in each text to what we read in Pebble Go. 
 
Next, students created a Sway to present what they learned. Sway is a Microsoft app that allows users to create interactive presentations with content cards. Sway searches Bing for copyright-friendly, appropriate images for students to use. We spent one entire class typing their text into cards. Then students were encouraged to add images and change the format of their Sway. My first graders found Sway easy to use. Several came to our next lesson and told me that they created more Sways at home during the week. 

About two months after our iguanas research, my first grade students started their big research project. Students independently navigated Pebble Go and most of them were able to find the main idea on each page and write it on a graphic organizer. 

Here are some screen shots from the Sways that my students created!

 

 

 

Bibliography Bootcamp

My fifth grade language arts teachers recently asked me to teach a lesson on how to create bibliographies of the sources their students used during their nonfiction writing unit. Since this topic is challenging for many fifth graders, I wanted to develop an engaging lesson that would encourage them to approach bibliographies with confidence. So I instructed our fifth graders to report to Bibliography Boot Camp.

When students came to the media center, they lined up outside and waited for me to give directions. I greeted students by yelling that my name was Sergeant Lewis and that they had arrived at Bibliography Boot Camp. I told them this would be the hardest 45 minutes of their life and I didn't expect many of them to make it to the end. However, if students were up for the challenge, they were instructed to march into the media center and stand in formation.

In the media center, I taught students a military cadence (borrowed from my very creative media specialist friend), which they repeated after me.

I don't know but it's been said

Cite the sources that you've read!

Give the credit where it's due.

If you don't, they'll come for you!

Sound off!

1, 2

Sound off!

3, 4

Sound off!

1, 2, 3, 4

Next we discussed what a bibliography is and why it is so important to the cite sources we use in research.  I gave each student a booklet that they could keep as a reference after our lesson. The booklet also provided lines for students to practice writing entries during the lesson. Then I explicitly taught students how to create bibliography entries for the types of sources they use most often. I made sure to show students where they should look within each source to locate the necessary information. We started with print books and then continued to websites, online database articles, and encyclopedias. After I taught students each type of entry, they practiced creating an entry in their booklets. To simplify this step, I selected resources in advance that they would be likely to use based on their research topics. For books, students selected a book from a stack of nonfiction books I pulled.  For websites, I linked several sites to the media center site. And I showed an article from Grolier Online for online database articles. Although encyclopedia articles are included in the booklet, I did not have time to teach students how to create this type of entry during our 45 minute lesson.

After students completed a bibliography entry correctly, they were instructed to participate in a physical activity. Prior to the lesson, I borrowed some cardio workout stations from my physical education teachers and spread these out around the media center. When students were given permission to train, they selected a cardio station and followed the directions to complete the activity. After all students successfully created the required entry, we reassembled as a group and moved on to the next type of bibliography entry. 

 

"Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."

-General George S. Patton

Click below to download the presentation I used during the lesson.

Bibliography Boot Camp from Jennifer Lewis

And click here to download the booklet I created to give students during the lesson.

Using Microsoft Forms to Assess Reading Comprehension

I recently created multiple choice reading comprehension quizzes for each of the Georgia Children's Book Award nominees using Microsoft Forms. Our Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl team reads these titles. The quizzes are a useful tool to determine which books were read and understood by which team members. We will use the results of the quizzes to help select which students compete at our competition in January.

Using Microsoft Forms for reading comprehension quizzes offers many benefits! It is very easy to use (for both teachers and students) and offers the option to quickly check students' scores. Here is how I create reading comprehension quizzes using Microsoft Forms in just a few easy steps!

Open your Office 365 account and select Forms. The dashboard shows all of the quizzes you have created. To create a new quiz, select "New" in the upper left corner.

First assign a title to your new quiz. I use the title of the book and the author for reading comprehension quizzes. You can also add a picture of the book cover by selecting the picture icon to the right. Next select "Add question." Forms allows you to choose from five different types of questions. For this type of Form, select "Quiz." With a quiz question, you provide multiple choices and designate one of the choices as the right answer so that the quiz grades itself after students finish the last question.

Next, add your question and answer choices. Forms defaults to two answer choices, but you can add more. Be sure to select the "Correct answer" so that the quiz is self-grading. Also move the slider at the bottom to "Required" so that students can't accidentally skip questions. Repeat these steps as needed until your quiz contains all of the necessary questions.

 This is what the Form looks like in the creator's view once it has been completed.

Forms also allows you the option to

• customize the look of the quiz with different themes
• download a QR code that takes the user to the quiz
• create a link so that you can email the quiz to students or link it to your website
• set a deadline for taking the quiz
• export results to for easy student data documentation

Skype-a-Thon 2016

Students at my school traveled 8,161 virtual miles during Skype-a-Thon 2016! We made nine connections with people in four different states!

I love Skype because it allows our students to have experiences they would not otherwise have. They love connecting with people who live in different parts of the world and learning about how their lives are the same, but different. Mystery Location Skype, Mystery Number Skype, and Mystery Animal Skype provide students with an opportunity to practice critical thinking skills. 

Here are the connections that we made!

1. A fourth grade gifted class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.

2. A third grade class shared their favorite books with a first grade class from a nearby school.

3. A second grade class learned about dinosaurs in Denali National Park from one of their park rangers.

4. Our technology club Skyped with Microsoft Sales Director Damon Fitzgerald. The students played Mystery Skype to determine his location and he told students about some new Microsoft products.

5. A fourth grade gifted class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.

6. A third grade class Skyped with Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education for Microsoft. The students told him about our school, how we use Microsoft products, and their favorite books. 

7. A kindergarten class played Mystery Animal Skype with a second grade class from a nearby school.

8. A second grade class played Mystery Animal Skype with a second grade class from a nearby school.

9. A third grade class played Mystery Number Skype with a third grade class from a nearby school.