Weekly Update - May 20

This year has FLOWN by!  We are finished checking out books and students are allowed to keep books until they are finished, but we're hoping most of the books will be back soon!!

Kindergarten: We worked on spiral stories this week.  We read The Napping House by Audrey Wood , This is the House that Jack Built by Simms Taback and Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr.  Spiral stories are ones where there are parts that are repeated or added on to each page.

First Grade: We finished our ___landia's!  We wrote and drew animals, plants, holidays, and sports that would be in our land.  If we had time, we also created maps and flags.  It was fun and VERY creative!

Second Grade:  We continued to work on Internet Safety and spent some time working with the Netsmartz curriculum. We talked about being safe online AND offline.

Third Grade: We had a "hodge podge" day in library this week!  We shared our Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens spin off, we looked at our essential skills for the year and some classes had time to watch the Dewey rap!

Fourth Grade:  We officially finished our Spine Label poetry and some students worked on library skills on the computer.

Fifth Grade: We learned about Destiny Quest and how to write reviews for other students to read about the books we have finished this year!

Sixth Grade:  Our student lead projects are coming along nicely.  We hope we can get them finished our next library time!!

Summer Reading Programs

Both the Cedar Falls and Waterloo Libraries have Summer Reading programs where students can earn FREE books!

Both programs have the theme 'Dig Into Reading'.
More information about the Waterloo program can be found online.
The Cedar Falls Library has a flyer posted below and can be found online.

Both have great opportunities this summer!

Click to view larger

Weekly Update - May 10

As the year is winding down, we will be at limited or no checkout.  This is a perfect time to checkout the public library or the teacher collection in the child's classroom!

Kindergarten: We are creating our OWN circle stories during library!  They're turning out great!

First Grade: We shared our poems (look for these to come home) with the class.  We read Weslandia by Paul Fleischmann.  We will create our own civilizations next library time!

Second Grade: As the year winds down we are spending a few class periods talking about Internet Safety.  As the summer comes around, there are more opportunities for students to use computers, and sometimes unsupervised or with a babysitter.  This makes the end of the year a perfect opportunity to teach Internet Safety skills.  This week's lesson was on privacy.

Third Grade:  We wrapped up the classroom animal projects by spending time online with Owen & Mzee as well as working on library book order in Order in the Library.

Fourth Grade: We finished our Spine Label poems.  They will be online soon!

Fifth Grade: We discussed text features in non-fiction; what they are and why they're important to the text.

Sixth Grade: We finished our Lewis Carroll author study and chose our end of the year topics.  We are doing mini-mini-research projects, a video project, or both!

Library Update - May 2

Kindergarten: We're continuing to work with circle stories.  This week we focused on If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and What to do if an Elephant Stands on your Foot by Michelle Robinson.  The students worked on retelling using the Mimio for both books.

First Grade: We're now finished with poetry!  We created In ____ poems.  There were some great ones like In my backpack, In my room, In Iowa City, and many more!

Second Grade: We worked with the book Water Dance by Thomas Locker.  It's a book of riddles on the topic of the water cycle.  We guessed the riddles then tried to put the story back together in small groups.  It was a fun tie-in to our weather unit.

Third Grade: Owen & Mzee was our focus during library.  We read the remarkable story between these two and had a chance to visit the website telling us more about them.

Fourth Grade:  We started creating Spine Poems using books from the library.  They are great and will soon be available online for viewing.

Fifth Grade: We finished our "Where I'm From" poems and some students shared theirs online!  Take a look!

Sixth Grade: We're starting a mini-unit studying Lewis Carroll.  This week we read The Crocodile.  Students were given a chance to memorize the poem in a short amount of time.  We also discussed that it is a parody poem and compared the original (Against Idleness and Mischief by Isaac Watts) to the Carroll version.  We will spend a little more time on this.

5th Grade Poetry

Fifth grade has been writing "Where I'm From" poems during library time and they are fantastic!  I wanted to share them with more than me so with permission I uploaded them to our library website!  They are worth reading!