21 Card Flickr - Room 7

Credit: Steven Depolo

Jello is a cube; it's colorful; it's kind of hard and squishy. It's delicious. Then one day, it drank a magic potion and turned into a really fast, very strong, giant monster, and tried to eat me.

Credit: epSos.de

But I ran away from the monster ... but my friend didn't. But once I turned around, the whole city was gone. Right on the tail of the monster was my dog, trying to gobble up the jello.

Credit: Beverly & Pack

Then I saw a dog trying to eat out of a trumpet, because it likes what's inside of it.

Credit: Colin ZHU

Then Harry Potter saw the dog trying to eat out of the trumpet and put a spell on it to eat the jello monster.

Credit: Amy Loves Yah

Then a pumpkin monster was eating the dog eating the jello.

Credit: Qfamily

Above is the battleground they were fighting on; the dog stubbed his toe on a rock, and the jello monster started to dissolve.

Credit: Bohemianism

All of a sudden, a giant bird came in and helped the jello stop dissolving; the jello then ate it.

Credit: rbrwr

The jello monster then made his way to New York City and destroyed all of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Then a skyscraper fell on him, and he was no more.

Credit: Dan4th

Then the Boston Bruins arrived in New York to see the destruction. Then a giant bear came and ate them. The bear barfed them all up.

Credit: CubaGallery

Then the giant flower that the Bruins thought was beautiful; they slept in it, and then ... it was death by poison ivy flower.

Credit: tintedglass

Then the dog from the beehive was collecting pollen from the flower; the queen was angry at him because he stole a piece of honey and brought it to his emperor dog.

Credit: Moyan Brenn

Then a rabbit destroyed both nests. To make an escape, he dug a hole to the center of the earth.

Credit: Amber Rosenbaugh

Then a baby bulldog was born and it was mad that it wasn't a golden retriever, so it waddled its baby feet over to the jello monster's brother. Then they teamed up together. Their names were Jello Monster II and Angry Pug Baby.

Credit: Odalaigh

Then a ninja dog tried to defeat the Angry Pug Baby and Jello Monster II. It did, because he used a super magical karate chop to chop their heads off. Then he ate their eyeballs.

Credit: Toni Alter

And then he decided to join the evil squad of dogs. They went up against the evil squad of cats. They had a pet fight.

Credit: grantlairdjr

The king dog went up to the king cat and ate it. Then he lied down to digest it.

Credit: {justjennifer}

Then a panda came up out of nowhere and saw the cat beating up the dogs. Since the panda likes dogs, he ate the cat's head off. Then the cat surprisingly said, "This place is awful; let's get out of here."

Credit: pretendtious

The devil puppy had a cheese magnet; it was going to eliminate all the cheese in the world. Then everyone panicked. Finally, there was cats in a hot air balloon, and they squished the puppy. After that, he chose to not come back.

Credit: Hugo Chisolm

After the puppy got squished, a guy started playing the guitar to make all the cheese come back. The puppy got unsquished. After that, the guy started smashing the guitar all around the place and killed a cat by accident.

Credit: 黄靖昀

Warriors from out of space saw this evil robot guy and had to defeat him because he had planted a nuke in the earth. Then they all blew up and died.





Once there was an ocean with dolphins; the first one was named Taco. One day, the other dolphins were jumping on him. They told his mom, Mr. T., to get tacos. Taco came in and jumped all over them. They decided to go upstairs and watch Oprah. It took a turn for the worse, so they went downstairs to see their dad. The end.

Night and Day

I read The Dark by Lemony Snicket to Grade 1. It's on a lot of Caldecott-buzz lists, and is illustrated by Jon Klassen, who received both the official Caldecott AND an Honor this year.

After discussing why some of us are afraid of the dark, we agreed that our imaginations are usually much worse than anything that might actually befall us ... except for one boy who hurt himself while crossing a room in the dark after his mom had rearranged the furniture.

Then we talked about the differences between the sky during the day and at night. Here are some of the students' illustrations:

National Spelling Bee - Who Won? [Secret Contest Alert!]

The finals of the National Spelling Bee are appointment television for me and my friends ... the 2013 contest airs tonight on ESPN at 8 p.m. It's been bumped up from ESPN2!

Anyone who leaves a note in my mailbox by Thursday, 6/20, with the name of the winner gets to pick a free book from the donation box.

Fun fact from their web site: XANTHOPHYLL is the word Laura Ingalls Wilder misspelled in an 1880s community spelling match. Read more about it in Little House on the Prairie.

And one of my favorite clips from a past contest:

Dictionary Kites

Second graders have been working on their dictionary skills, including alphabetization and guide words. They put these skills to work creating dictionary kites - the body includes a word, its definition, and an illustration; the tail includes the page number, guide words, and part of speech.

 

Kids Reading Across RI - June 1

The KIDS Reading Across Rhode Island program encourages students across the state in grades 4 through 6 to read the same book, and engage in community discussions and programs.

This year’s selection is Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. On Saturday, June 1, a kickoff celebration at the State House will include crafts, games, and a free copy of the book (one per family) while supplies last. Ha will speak at 2:30 p.m.

Visit the OLIS web site for more information.

Free Rice!

Did you know that you can help feed people in need, while having fun AND learning stuff? Check out Freerice.com. You can quiz yourself on a variety of topics, from vocabulary to math to French to geography.

Abiyoyo, Abiyoyo

I remember being introduced to a ton of great books via the Reading Rainbow TV show. One such title is Abiyoyo, a South African lullaby adapted by none other than Pete Seeger. I shared it with the kindergartners, who enjoyed singing along. ZOOP!

5 Card Flickr!

To introduce our discussion of copyright beyond the written word, the fifth and sixth graders played 5 card Flickr. This game pulls images from the photo storage system Flickr and challenges users to create a story from the random images. You can try it yourself.

In the meantime, here are some of the stories:

The Lucky Flower

Weird Life

A Sad Yet Pleasing Christmas Story

The Mimes

Memories

A Bad Date

The Ferris Wheel

The Worst Day Ever

The Nature Walk

Microsoft Word - Thesaurus

When it turned out that our print thesaurus didn't include some of the words for which the third graders wanted synonyms, I decided to eschew it in favor of an online resource: Microsoft Word. Did you know that it can help you find better, more interesting words when you are writing a report or a story?

Depending on the version on your computer, the way to access the thesaurus varies slightly. But it's generally under "Tools" on the standard toolbar.

Students practiced opening Word on the laptops, then typed a word and chose a new one from the thesaurus. Here are some of their synonym pairs:

awesome	amazing outrageous breathtaking
annoying	irritating
pleased	satisfied
stupendous	stunning
beautiful	gorgeous wonderful
fabulous	magnificent
hungry	famished