My regular schedule was disrupted this week for an annual Christmas luncheon our school hosts each December for the clergy of the community. So classes had to be moved around a bit and a couple of them even had to be shortened. Fortunately, the teachers were understanding and willing to cooperate as this is an opportunity for the pastors of our area to get inside our school and get a glimpse of what we do here. We are not affiliated with any specific church or denomination so the exposure is important.
I read The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett to the kinder and first grade classes. My intent had been to do an ABC order activity with the kinder kids based on the names of the reindeer in the story but, due to the schedule changes, there wasn’t time. With the first graders we discussed the character traits of Teeka while we were reading the story. For their activity, the first graders had to list words that described Teeka. I got my ideas from this free packet from Teachers Pay Teachers.
I read Christmas books to all my classes this week. You can see the list of what we have in our library here.
We continued with Digital Citizenship with the second graders. This week was lesson 3 – Keep It Private. We discussed what information is okay to share and what information is private and should not be shared with people.
My third graders continued looking at book parts this week. Our emphasis was the Table of Contents. We looked at the table of contents of one of the books in the library, discussed the information found there, and then completed a workbook page from LiBEARy Skills K-3 on the table of contents.
I introduced the Dewey Decimal System this past week to my fourth graders. We are going to be spending a lot of time on this topic in the coming weeks. For this first lesson we just completed a workbook page from LiBEARy Skills 4-6 that gave them practice in shelf order of Dewey call numbers.
After the teacher and I graded the Animoto projects, we decided to give the students a chance to fix their projects for a better grade. Their library time this past week was spent making those corrections. The few who either didn’t have corrections or made their corrections quickly were allowed to visit Maker stations.
The fifth graders also visited later in the week to work on a Holiday research project assigned by the teacher. This is not your typical Christmas Around the World project. The teacher first had the students pick a country. After reading about the celebrations of that country, they had to pick one holiday/celebration to research. They will be visiting the library. This was their second visit to the library for this project. They will be finishing it up this coming week.
Our Christmas reading chain is gaining momentum. My student and aide and my part time assistant spend their time either shelving books or cutting and stapling the reading chain. The chain is a little more than halfway around the library. I have a stack of papers waiting to be cut and stapled. I can’t wait to see the students reaction when they come to the library this week.
It’s not too late. You can still sign up for my mailing list and get a freebie – a document you can edit to make my Christmas promotion idea your own.
Amazon Affiliate links to materials mentioned in this post (your purchase helps support this blog.
The Wild Christmas Reindeer
Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury
Library Skills
Library Skills: Grades 4-6 (Library Skills Activities for Grades 4-6)
