Library Lady

Last week was a short week for us – classes dismissed early on Wednesday so that the teachers could travel to Phoenix for the annual ACSI Professional Development. I still got in most of my elementary classes and a couple of extra classes besides.

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

A Sick Day for Amos McGee was the focus of my kinder lesson. I use this guide from The Blue Brain Teacher on Teachers Pay Teachers.  The guide contains reading/listening comprehension questions that I use every year. There are also coloring pages available here and here.

I got brave with my activity for the first graders. We read James Marshall’s version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We then discussed story elements – setting, characters, problem, and solution. Moving Mountains Education has a free unit on Teachers Pay Teachers which includes a cut and paste activity on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This was my first time cutting and pasting with this batch of first graders – always a fearful event. It went well – no one cut their hair or glued themselves to the table. I think they may have learned something about story elements so it was a win.

Digging in a little more into Literary Elements – we discussed PLOT in second grade. I read Peppe the Lamplighter  and then filled out a Plot worksheet from First to Forever on Teachers Pay Teachers together based on Peppe the Lamplighter. This helped them get used to determining how to answer the questions based on a specific story. In the future, they will need to complete the worksheet on their own.

So much information can be found on the title page of a book. My third graders had a lesson this week in the information found on this important page. Some of the information was new and other was review. I was pleasantly surprised at how much information they remembered from last year when I taught it to them in second grade. I found it easy to create the worksheet I used, but if you don’t want to create your own, you can find mine in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop.

Book parts discussion continued in the fourth grade. We looked at the Table of Contents and the Glossary and their purpose in a book. I used one of the books off our shelves that had both to introduce the lesson. As an assessment I used a couple of pages from the out of print LiBEARy Skills grades 4-6 – one page on the Table of Contents and another on the Glossary.

We got down to business on our Animoto Mock Caldecott projects in fifth grade. I got the idea for this project from the Aug/Sept issue of Library Sparks. While the magazine is no longer in publication, they have a great archives online. The .pdf is still available here. As we move through this project I will be sharing the different resources I have created as well. We had two sessions this week. One to get them into their groups, remind then of the Caldecott Criteria, and then choose the book they would be promoting and starting on their project checklist. The second session was spent working on their storyboards. Both of these are part of the .pdf.  Curious which books from Mock Caldecott my list they chose? They Say Blue, Blue, Hello Hello, Sleep Train, Red, A Stone for Sascha, I Am a Cat, and Punctuation for President.

I had one “extra” class this week. The tenth grade history class came in to research topics AD 500-1500. When this teacher brings students my only task is directing students to resources or helping with computer issues. The kids usually just use online resources as the teacher does not require books.

One “happy” for the week was when a senior came in and thanked me for showing them how to use the citation tool in the Thomson-Gale database. He said it made citations so easy. It is so fun when they listen and use what you have taught them.

TeachersPayTeachers resources
The Blue Brain Teacher – Reading guide on A Sick Day for Amos McGee
Moving Mountains Education – free unit on fairy tales
First to Forever – Plot worksheet
Library to Classroom (my store) – title page worksheet

Online Resources
Animoto 
Library Sparks – Animoto .pdf
A Sick Day for Amos McGee coloring pages

Amazon Affiliate Links to items in this post (your purchase helps support this blog)

A Sick Day for Amos McGee
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Picture Puffin Books)
Peppe the Lamplighter
Library Skills: Grades 4-6 (Library Skills Activities for Grades 4-6)
They Say Blue
Blue
Hello Hello
Sleep Train
Red
A Stone for Sascha
I Am a Cat
Punctuation for President

You can either use the free version of Animoto or upgrade to a Pro Level and Make a video with Getty stock!