This time, their assignment was in reverse: figure out where certain topics would live. The following were the trickiest, since all of our brains don't work the same way as Melvil Dewey's. Where would YOU go to find the following? You can find the answers below the Room 10 photos (it was Pajama Day!).
You have to find out when dinosaurs lived.
You are planning a trip to Hawaii.
You need to identify a rock you found on vacation.
You are doing a project about 16th century explorers.
You want to find information on some famous paintings.
Answers
Dinosaurs = 500s (even though they lived a loooooooooong time ago ... the 900s are only about HUMAN history)
Vacation destinations = geography, or 900s (even though going on vacation is a recreational activity)
Rocks = 500s (even if you found one on vacation)
Explorers = 900s (even if you're doing a project for fun about them)
Paintings = 700s (even if they are old and the artists lived a long time ago)
The library often sounds a little like a zoo, but this past month, it also sounded like a farm! I read a selection of animal sounds books to the PreK, DLP, and K classes:
Students got a huge kick out of the story of Bark, George (thank you to fellow librarian Suzanne Jordan, who recommended it!).
To support their retelling skills, students colored and cut out the characters so they could bring them home and share story to their families. (You can click on the link to access and download more copies.)
Then we watched this puppet-show version of the story:
Because students' animal sounds sometimes got a little ... enthusiastic ... I taught them the conductor's cut-off signal. Which reminded me of The Sesame Street All-Animal Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa:
The fifth graders of Room 7 seem to all be artists ... they have wiped out our drawing book collection, and jumped on the chance to create their own holiday cards last week to send through the Wee Deliver system. I predict careers as graphic artists and illustrators!
As you may already have heard, the new Common Core standards emphasize informational text. It's never too early to start getting used to reading nonfiction books. In fact, several first graders at Garden City asked me earlier in the year to get more nonfiction for their section, because they prefer facts to stories. I've been working on it and welcome any donations!
In class recently, first grade students reviewed how to use a table of contents. They all received a book about bugs and then found the chapter that described how their bugs look. They drew a picture of their bug and wrote down at least one fact. Here they are at work:
