Opposites! Opposites! - Grade 1

After we read Earth, Sky, Wet Dry: A Book of Nature Opposites by Durga Bernhard and Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli, Grade 1 students worked together to develop lists of opposites. They got some inspiration from this Sesame Street video, and had a stack of books to help with ideas as well.

Can your family fill in the table below with the missing words? Can you come up with more examples?

up
	cold
fast
	quiet
inside
	sad

Here are some of the kids hard at work:

I LOVE that A. recognized Eric Carle's illustration style
and told me he had seen it in other books.

Evidently, the Olivia book is HILARIOUS.

AM K Apple Tree Sequencing

Kindergartners are learning about sequencing: what comes first? what comes next? We reviewed the order of the seasons and then read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons. Next they arranged the stages of an apple tree in the correct order:

Grade 4 Dewey Investigation

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. For example:

Room 9's group discussions got a little more heated than Room 11's ... can you tell who is in which room?

 

Name That Bone - Room 3

Second graders took notes for the first time in library, listening to Dem Bones by Bob Barner and learning such information as:

• Where is your patella?
• How many vertebrae are in your spine?
• Where is your clavicle?
• How many bones are in your foot?
• Which bone is the longest?

For our next lesson, they will investigate a list of "I wonder" questions about bones, using the table of contents in different books to find the answers.

Room 3 with our new friend, on loan from Mrs. Hornung, the nurse.

Student Recommendation Shelf

Do you have favorite books that you think other students should read too? You can be in charge of the recommendation shelf for a week! Just give Ms. Moore a list of 4-6 books that you love (and that we have at the Stadium library).

Here are Kelsie's picks:

• Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
• How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell (which had already been checked out before I had time to take the picture
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (one of my personal favorites too!)

How to Log In to Your Library Account

It’s the night before library class. You can’t remember which books you have checked out. And you're worried that the book you want to get next might not be available. No problem ... so long as you have internet access at home, your can check your account online via RICAT.

Log in

1. Go to http://ricat.net.
   
   
2. Under “Elementary Schools,” scroll down to the Stadium link. The school library page will open.
   
   
3. Click the “Login” button in the top right.


4. 
   Enter your User Name: CDS#####
   (fill in your lunch/shelf card number)
   
   
5. Enter your Password: MMDDYY
   (fill in your six-digit birthdate; for example, May 5, 2003 would be typed in as 050503)
   
   
6. You should now see your name in the top right corner of the screen.

Check your account

Click on the “My Info” tab to see what books you have checked out.

Place a Hold

1. Click the "Catalog" tab.
   
   
2. Before searching for your title or subject, choose “RICAT (all members)” from the Location drop-down. This will search all schools, so if Stadium doesn’t have what you’re looking for, you can still request your item. 
   
   
   
3. When find the item you want, click on the book’s title to go to the Details page.
   
   
4. Then click the “Hold It!” button on the right

Grade 1 Teeth on the Loose!

So many first graders have been telling me about their loose and missing teeth, I decided to make a lesson out of the topic.

First we read one fiction and one nonfiction book about loose teeth. Then students wrote down one fact they learned. Here are some of them:

• The top of your tooth is called the crown.
• Kids have 20 teeth. Adults have 32 teeth.
• If you eat a lot of candy, you might get cavities.
• Roots hold your teeth in.
• If you have a wiggly tooth, eat an apple.

Finally, the kids each placed a tooth on a chart showing how many teeth they've lost so far. Can you use it to answer the questions below?

• How many kids haven't lost any teeth yet?
• What is the most common number of lost teeth?
• Have more kids lost a total of 1 tooth or a total of 5 teeth?

Room 12 Researchers

Fifth graders are reviewing some of the research skills they learned in years past to make sure they'll be ready for upcoming social studies and science projects. Here are some Room 12 students using the table of contents to figure out where they'd find certain information about different dog breeds:

Between D's shirt blending in with the chair and G. peeking in at the corner,
this picture cracks me up.

Grade 3 FICtion

Third graders now get to take out books from anywhere in the library ... but they're not sure how to find what they want. So we'll be learning how to use the online catalog and convert call number listings into shelf locations.

We started simple, with the fiction section. Every fiction call number has "FIC" as the first line, and then the first three letters of the author's last name as the second line.

For example, if I wrote a book, the call number would be

FIC
MOO

What would YOUR call number be?

Students figured out the call numbers for a list of books and and then created their very own for a fiction book they "wrote." Here are some of their book covers:

Video: Evolution of Music

As part of our music research kickoff, 6th graders watched this Pentatonix video and noted which songs they recognized. I am happy to report that students were familiar with Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, and more from before they were born. How many can you identify?

Charting the Decades - Grade 2

Second graders learned about two new concepts this week:

• publication/copyright dates
• assigning a decade to a year

Students chose a book, located its copyright date, and then decorated a tiny book with that information. Their next task was to figure out their book's decade and glue it in the correct column of their class' chart. Finally, we analyzed the data. 

Here are some close-ups of tiny book art: