Happy Halloween!

Scary Faces!

In kindergarten, we read Can You Make a Scary Face? by Jan Thomas. The answer to that question is yes.

Boney Research - Grade 2

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? 

Then we created a list of questions they had about bones and practiced using a table of contents to find the answers. Here are some of the facts they learned:

• A muscle is attached to a bone by a tendon. 
• Bones are made of water and calcium. 
• Broken bones can heal themselves, but they have to be immobilized.
• Joints have different names. One kind is a ball and socket.

And here they are at work:

If you'd like to know more about bone names, the Animaniacs can tell you:

Grade 4 Dewey Matching Game

As a follow-up to our last lesson, when fourth-graders figured out Dewey Decimal System categories, this week they assigned a stack of topics to those categories. Each table got a set of "playing cards" that they had to place in the correct area of their "game board." (Many thanks to Judy Ouellette for cutting the cards out!)

Some of the cards were kind of tricky ... you could make the case for a certain subject to be in more than one Dewey category. So long as the students could explain their thinking, they got full credit. Here are the teams at work:

 These two got EVERY SINGLE CARD put into the correct category -
the first team to achieve a perfect score in my four years of teaching!

Grade 3 FICtion Covers

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:

Grade 1 E Book Covers

First graders are learning about call numbers, which work like addresses for books. Although they're called "numbers," most only have letters ... kind of confusing. We're starting with the E (for Everyone) section.

Every picture book call number has "E" as the first line, and then the first letter of the author's last name as the second line. For example, if I wrote a book, the call number would be

E
M

What would YOUR call number be?

Students figured out theirs and created an E book they "wrote." Here are some of their book covers: