Peace With Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every year I teach my Shabbat School kindergarten students about Dr. King, I use a storybook and the journal, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me.  I added another hands on activity and shortened the journal by one page.  The second page of the journal takes a lot of writing and I think my young students benefit more from the other comparisons the journal makes.  Typically, the recommended story for the journal is My Brother Martin and Me by Christine King Farris.  

I used the book As Good As Anybody because I like the idea of students changing their thinking to "no matter what somebody says to put me down, I need to remember that I am as good as anybody."  Here is my review of the book, which if you notice is marked for older grades, but my kindergartners understood what they needed to get out of the book.

The project they made during class was a peace plate I found on Pinterest.  It was easy, but the results were really cool.  They were all proud of their work.

I Call Them Author Competitions, But Really...

It's just an excuse for me to read more books to my younger students.  I started making a list of my students favorite books or ones I see them checkout often and was going to town until I started collecting photos of the authors and realized they were all White.  STOP!  Now, it's time to look up some authors from diverse backgrounds and introduce a few of those wonderful writers.  On the list: Nikki Giovanni, Grace Lin, Donald Crews, Alma Ada Flor, Mo Willems, and Peter Brown.  I feel that I was quite successful in our reading ventures, especially since students non-stop picked books to checkout from the display shelves of these authors.  

Here is how I introduced the concept which I borrowed from Pinterest (once again proving to myself that I don't just collect and store, I use pins too).  3 authors one week, then 3 different authors the next week.  I showed my students a flipchart on the Promethean Board that would allow me to graph each classes favorite author (this is where the photos came in handy).  I read aloud the stories and we discussed what we liked about each book and what we would change about each book.  Then I played videos of the authors, so that my students could see that authors are REAL people.  After that, they voted on which one they liked the best--which was tallied as a class for the graph.

Books read:
I Am Invite to a Party! by Mo Willems
You Will Be My Friend by Peter Brown
The Sun Is So Quiet by Nikki Giovanni
Fortune Cookie Fortunes by Grace Lin
Night at the Fair by Donald Crews
I Love Saturdays y domingos by Alma Ada Flor



Image courtesy of hin255 at freedigitalphotose.net

Pinkerton, Behave! Book Review

One of my back-to-school read aloud choices is the funny picturebook, Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellogg.  The book is celebrating its 35th year with an anniversary edition.  I LOVE Steven Kellogg's character, Pinkerton!  My family even has a dog named after the character. 

Family Dog, Pinkerton

Pinkerton, Behave! has the great Dane trying to follow simple commands without much success.  Pinkerton will jump out the window when told to come or lick a "dummy" burglar when told to get him.  Pinkerton is taken to obedience school where the same commands are given and Pinkerton still misunderstands them.  The instructor of the school is very strict and warns Pinkerton's family that he needs to improve or be kicked out.  Well, the same commands are reviewed and this time ALL the dogs follow Pinkerton's actions!  Oh no!  That night, Pinkerton's skills are put to a test when a burglar comes to the house.  How will Pinkerton save the day?  You have to read the book to find out.

This story is such a great way to introduce students to the three types of reading: read to self, read the pictures, or retell the story.  The illustrations help tell the story, which makes it necessary for students to see the whole book first.  The story also works for predicting because Pinkerton repeats the exact same actions for each command given.  It's a silly book that has students giggling throughout.

Book cover image from http://www.penguin.com/book/pinkerton-behave-by-steven-kellogg/9780803741300

Don't Use Up All Your Wiggles Book Review

During summer school students should get a breather from the work they put into their learning.  In my school district, library time happens to fill up one of those "brain break" times in the schedule once a week.  To keep with the theme of having students move around, I decided to use either brain break videos or stories with movement.

Doreen Cronin's book, Wiggle, makes for a nice "brain break" read aloud.  I read this to younger students at the summer school locations where I'm the librarian and the kids thoroughly enjoyed the book.  Being able to get your wiggles out is important and when a book tells you to do it during story time...well, take advantage!

The book focuses on a dog who wiggles his way around from morning till night.  The interactive dialogue makes this book both verbally and kinesthetically successful.  Some pages are simple statements while other pages ask the readers questions.  The illustrations help the reader visualize the actions.  

I combined this book with the song "Wiggle It" by Patty Shukla:

We also did an activity suggested by the Bounce and Wiggle guide: what sound does the animal make?  I transferred pictures of the animals to a flipchart to be displayed on a Promethean board--added relevant habitat backgrounds, typed in the noises of the animals and set the text to completely transparent.  This way kids could make the animal sound from their own background knowledge and then I just switch the text back to solid--it's kind of a cool effect.  

To keep with the movement theme, next will be Bounce and Stretch by Doreen Cronin.

Stop, Drop, and Color?!

One of the best end of the year moments was when I told my kindergartners they got to (free) draw under their chairs.  They were so excited!  This provided them a different perspective...and this was definitely a new one for them.  It was so cool just to see them laying on their backs, looking up at the bottom of their chairs, crayon in hand, and hard at work.  I mean they showed enthusiastic concentration!  They also thought it was fun to just turn and look at what their table mate was drawing.

I saw the idea on Pinterest, but my tables are too tall for my kids to reach up and touch, so chairs it was.  This worked out better because they had their own space to work with and the chair legs contained them within this area.  I gave them their little Dixie cup of crayons (easy to pass out and clean up), I taped the pieces of paper to the bottom of their chairs (my 5th graders also came in to help--a rare end of year treat, too), told them to lay on their backs and wiggle under their chairs, and the magic began.  Even better, they loved that I let them take the drawings with them that day.

Just imagine the future possibilities--you could use this activity to change simple activities or assignments into more stimulating ones or as a brain break.  I will definitely continue to use this in future years!

SI Kids Rookie Series -- Football

I am not a football fan. But, my boys in K-5 enjoy reading about football, so I seek out books for them.  I was excited when I came across Sports Illustrated Rookie Series that feature football books on ABC's, opposites, and colors.  I knew instantly from the covers that my kindergarten and 1st grade boys would LOVE them! (Yes, I judged the books by their covers...so sue me!)

The books are very well conceived for young readers.  They have full page photographs that represent the concept being referenced, the concept words are in bold colored print, and boxed-in text (easier to read).  The majority of text is only 2-3 simple sentences per page which makes it a good choice for readers who've progressed past phonics books.  Since the concept words are in larger bold stand alone text, it works for beginning readers, too.

My students have really enjoyed these titles and I even have my older students checking them out.

Cover images from capstone.com.

Author Study of Peter Brown

I happened to luck out and land the author, Peter Brown, for my Preschool-2nd graders.  What a great chance to start one of my pet projects for this school year--multi-grade author studies.  Why not start with Peter Brown?!  Armed with the books You Will Be My Friend! and the Bookflix versions of Children Make Terrible Pets and The Curious Garden I began.  Using some Pinterst inspiration, I created a folder featuring a mini-bio on Brown, pictures of his books, and a section for students to fill in similarities between his books.

My lesson geared toward kindergarten involved them hearing a very brief bio of Peter Brown and then over a 3 week period, I read aloud You Will Be My Friend!, Children Make Terrible Pets, and Mr. Tiger Goes Wild!  I posted the story map elements I wanted them to answer: title, author, characters, and what the characters looked like.  Because the studnets LOVED learning about Peter Brown, I can now refer back to this study to remind them about authors and characters.

First grade had a similar study, but I added setting, problem and solution to their story map.  One of my 1st graders is never satisfied with her checkout choices, so now she constantly asks me for a Peter Brown book (and who am I to deny a student who asks for a book by the author).

In second grade we only covered one book in class, which was The Curious Garden.  For their story map, I added in theme.  With my help, I guided the students to think about the theme of the book.  The main focus was on big words they learned from Brown's books. We started with gathering words from The Curious Garden, which we figured out the words by using context clues.  Then they continued the search in other Peter Brown books and wrote down words they discovered on chart paper.

Overall, this was a good experience just getting into author studies.  I've already made tweaks to make the next better.

All Peter Brown books can be pruchased through his website via IndieBound.