PreK Loves Pete the Cat!

Some days you just really need Pete the Cat to come in and remind you, "It's all good." We read three Pete the Cat books in preschool - one about his rocking school shoes, one about his white shoes, and one about his four groovy buttons. Readalong video below; pictures of the kids and their Pete the Cat dot-to-dot coloring after that.

Thanks to my colleague Ellen Caron for lending us Pete for the week!

Blast from the Past

We have a school camera that 6th graders will be using to take candids for the yearbook. From the looks of it, we knew it was kind of old ... then we looked at the pictures on the memory card and found out HOW old.

Here are photos of last year's 6th graders and this year's 5th graders as kindergartners! So cute! And even though I didn't know them back then, I totally recognize them all (including one girl who is now my student at Oak Lawn!).

Grade 5/6 Advertising Agency

The Superbowl is tonight, and part of the draw isn't the football, but the commercials. Advertisers pay dearly for the opportunity; a 30-second spot cost $5 million - an increase of $1 million since three years ago! While most of the ads are entertaining, they're still trying to get viewers to do or believe something.

We've spent the last several weeks talking about advertising, including its history (going back to ancient civilizations), its prevalance (some of the kids are walking ads in branded clothing), the power of logos (proven by the students' knowledge of these product mascots), and three tactics to be aware of: exaggeration, generalization, and scare tactics (I had a stack of scare-tactic flyers from the 2014 elections as real-life examples ... we'll see what ends up in my mailbox this fall).

Finally, the kids took what they had learned and produced an original ad of their own, using one of the tactics listed above. Here are Rooms 7, 12, and 14 at work:

And the Winner Is ... Spiders!

80 students chose from among
6 Mock Caldecott finalists, and
1 came out on top with
24 votes:

I'm Trying to Love Spiders, written and illustrated by Bethany Barton.  

Here are some reasons why: