Grade 6 Advertising Agency

After reading Balloons Over Broadway, Grade 6 students took a look at balloons then and now. They realized that today's Macy's Parade balloons are used as giant advertisements.

We then learned about three advertising tactics to be aware of: exaggeration, generalization, and scare tactics.

The students created their own ads using at least one of these tactics. Here are some of them:

Rube Goldberg-esque

Reading Balloons Over Broadway led to a short invention research unit for grade 5, wherein we compared print and online encyclopedias. Online was overwhelmingly preferred by the students ... and did you know that you can access World Book Web at home? Just go to askri.org.

Before the students chose inventions to investigate, I showed them a few videos of Rube Goldberg machines ... enjoy!

PeeWee Herman making his breakfast

Honda Accord deconstructed

Absolutely STUNNING OKGO video ... the students' jaws hit the floor

Three of these things ...

A big part of information literacy is being able to recognize patterns and to categorize facts, sources, etc. We're starting to work on these skills in kindergarten, and Kermit introduced a game that we played:

After the students figured out which one thing didn't belong in a collection of objects I had brought in (plates, cups, sock monkeys ...), they worked on their own "Three of these things" artwork. Here are some examples ... can you tell which doesn't belong??

 

 

What Do You See?

First graders studied weather and "things in the sky" in the classroom. When possible, I like to align library lessons with what students are currently learning about, so we read an informational book about different kinds of clouds, as well as mist and fog.

Then we read It Looked Like Spilled Milk, which follows the pattern of "Sometimes it looked like X, but it wasn't X," until the big reveal that the narrator is talking about a cloud. I brought up a Tumblr site called What Does That Cloud Look Like, and we took turns sharing our thoughts.

Finally, the students drew their own clouds, which we put up on the windows. Here is some of their artwork:

Can you tell what this cloud looks like? A SHIP!

Grade 4 FICtion

Fourth graders at Garden City had a refresher on how fiction call numbers work. I am a big believer in "gamification," or turning lessons into games with time limits and immediate feedback when possible. So instead of using a paper and pencil to list the order of call numbers, students were given "playing cards" and competed to see which team could get all of their fiction books in order first. As you can see from the pictures below, they were all determined to complete their task!

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: 

Most Borrowed Books - October

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: the Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney (#1 again!)
• Ripley's Believe It or Not! Prepare to be Shocked!
• Babymouse : Our Hero by Jennifer Holm 
• Babymouse : Queen of the World! by Jennifer Holm (still on list)
• The Haunting of Julia by Mary Hooper
• Bone [5] Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border by Jeff Smith
• Bone : Rose by Jeff Smith (still on list)
• The Worst of Friends: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud by Suzanne Jurmain
• Floors by Patrick Carman
• The Last Holiday Concert by Andrew Clements
• Judy Moody by Megan McDonald
• Guinness World Records 2012 (still on list)

Color Train

Source: harpercollinschildrens.com

PreK and DLP students learned about colors in class, so we did a color train lesson in library.

First we had a couple of readalouds, which the students helped me with:  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., and Freight Train by Donald Crews (which has been made into an app ... technology!).

Then each student got a board book about colors; I held up a piece of construction paper, and they all found that color in their book. Finally, they each colored a train car a specific color while we watched this video:

Here are our trains on display:

Balloons Over Broadway

I am reading at least one RI Children's Book Award nominee to all of the students in grades 3-6. We started with Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet, which is about Tony Sarg, the inventor of the huge balloons that float through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Then we worked on different activities with the different grades.

See some of the balloons through the decades.

• Grade 4: This packet of activities includes a maze and a template for drawing your own balloon.

• Grade 5: Talking about Tony's invention(s) led to a short invention research unit. Tony's apprentice was Bil Baird, who did the Lonely Goatherd marionnettes for "The Sound of Music." Bil's apprentice was none other than Jim Henson, inventor of the Muppets!

• Grade 6: When I asked students what they noticed about today's balloons v. ones from the past, they totally picked up on the fact that modern parades use them as advertising. So many of the characters floating down the streets are corporate mascots ... how many mascots do YOU recognize? We explored persuasive tactics in the following weeks.