#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 12

Whew! This was a BUSY week! We had a day off with Election Day, but then came back and hit the ground running with Veterans’ Day on Friday and our program. We were really excited about continuing our work with shapes, non-fiction (both in Reading and Writing), as well as some author work with Lauren Castillo as we finished up the Global Read Aloud. So…that meant that we got 19 books read in 4 days, and we also hit a TREMENDOUS milestone: we passed 200 books!!

First the update of what the door looks like now:

WOWZA! Look at all those books! (And yes, I did have to fudge that last strip of pictures–didn’t get them on before I left on Friday!)

We are up to 208 now, and reached 200 with this book on Thursday:

We put a star on it, just like when we got to 100. 🙂

This week we read 3 or 4 non-fiction books to help us with our reading and writing work, 5 shape books to go along with our math investigations, 2 books about the sun (the focus in our Science unit right now), and a couple of additional texts by some authors we love but haven’t read yet: The Happiest Book Ever by Bob Shea (we started Wednesday morning with this one!), King Baby by Kate Beaton (we read this one twice because it was so good!), Cat the Cat Who is That? and Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems (all those -et words!!), and Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts and Lauren Castillo. Lastly, we ended the week with a Veterans’ Day tribute as Mrs. Meihaus read America’s White Table to us during our Library visit.

As I always say, I’m excited to see what this next week will bring us (I think there are at least 6 books on the plan for tomorrow already!), and am SO GLAD we are doing this challenge. Someday soon I plan on having some big-deal math around the work we’ve done here so far, as well as predictions for where we might go. Can’t wait to share! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 11

SO excited to update again with some more great books we’ve been reading! We’re up to 188 books (what?? How is that possible?), AND we’re about to fill up our door! I wrote previously about how I think this challenge has changed both me and my students as readers, and that continues to ring true. SO glad I caught the book-a-day bug and excited to keep scratching the itch to read!!

Check out how we’re doing:

This week we read 17 books (starting w/ Yard Sale by Eve Bunting and Lauren Castillo). fullsizerender-4

Our Global Read Aloud text was Yard Sale, which we loved, and will probably revisit again next week because it’s so good! We also read a couple of non-fiction texts as part of our study in reading and writing, learning how to teach our writers as well as how to really dig into a teaching text as a reader. We found a couple of Halloween stories we has missed last week and read them on actual Halloween on Monday. The Spiderman book, the two “underpants” titles and The Ninjabread Man were requests from kiddos. I found Gilbert Goldfish and Everyone Loves Cupcake at the library and go them because they were an author we had read during our election reading. They are both by Kelly DiPucchio and we discovered she has so many great books to enjoy! The last two on our list were also because of author-love: Lori Degman wrote Norbert’s Big Dream and our friends in Rm. 203 shared it with us because they are having a Skype with her later this year, and Dirk Yeller is a favorite of mine from our friend Mary Casanova. We also read Curious George Gets a Talker as part of our focus on Disabilities Awareness Month (I hope to share more about this in a later post 🙂 ).

I mentioned that we had been doing some election reading, which is partly because of the election our parents are participating in on Tuesday, but also be WE get to vote as part of Kids Voting on Monday! We will elect the President at our school, and we will also vote on our Literary Lanterns! WOOHOO–democracy in action. 🙂 First I shared Vote For Me!, which was a great example of how NOT to encourage someone to vote for you–mudslinging and lots of “vote for me because I’m pretty” and “vote for me because I’m awesome” and “vote for me because I’ll give you something” kinds of reasons. We had a great conversation about how this was unfortunately how much of our Presidential election has been going this season. 😦 Next we read Grace For President, and got a much better example of how to handle an election. Grace, the main character in the story, wants to run for President after seeing a poster of all the past presidents and saying, “Where are all the girls?” This text had a great, kid-friendly example of how the electoral college works, too, which was a great surprise. After this one, I asked kiddos what they thought was important in a President. They had some great ideas; I wonder if this is what we will give them on Election Day:

Rm. 202 kids said things like: nice, polite, trustworthy, someone who cares for us, who will protect us, fair, someone who works hard, who is brave and of course, someone who is 35 years old or older–LOL

Lastly, we read the book If Kids Ran the World, which was another great example of what is really important in this world and is a challenge to all of the adults to think about the big things. Are we giving our kids what they really need? Are we focused on the right things? We didn’t get to it, but I will ask Rm. 202 kids this question: If YOU ran the world, what would you do? What would you think was important? Can’t wait to see what they say. 🙂

This was another great week of reading in Rm. 202!! What will this next week bring? Please check in next week to find out!! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 10

Sorry–this post is a little late. 😦 I’ve been having printer trouble lately (on a side note, if you know how to get your Canon printer to talk to macOS Sierra 10.12, let me know! Ugh.), and couldn’t get my pictures printed in time to get them on the door until after the weekend (so yes, you’ll get Week 11’s update this week, too! YAY!).

Last week we read 16 books, and are now up to 177! I love how we’re so close to filling up the door. I DON’T love how I didn’t print our pictures on card stock or laminate them or anything and now they’re curling and messy. Oh well, just don’t pay attention to that part, but instead check out what we read! Please? 🙂

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Last week we added several more Mo Willems books, but they were Pigeon books this week, rather than more (or new) Elephant and Piggie ones. We were working on a punctuation study, and so were investigating a variety of texts to see what we noticed about how authors use punctuation to create meaning. I quickly realized that besides being funny and full of speech bubbles (which have been a great addition to writing, too!), they are LOADED with pretty much every punctuation mark, too! It’s been great to watch how kids’ noticings and wonderings about what they see has changed since we started studying them. So, thanks, Mo Willems–it’s been great teaching with you lately!

Last week’s total also included a couple of read alouds by Ms. Holzmueller, who works in our room and with our grade level every day. She shared Where the Wild Things Are, Yoda, and Pete the Cat: A Pet for Pete, and BY GOLLY is she good at it! Kiddos love to listen to the way she reads (especially because it’s different than listening to me all the time!), and she has a great way of including kiddos in the story, asking them to make faces and movements, answer questions and share their thinking (again, in a different way than I do). Plus, I forgot how helpful it is to watch someone else teach your class, and how you pick up tips and tricks that others do that work with your students but that you may not have thought of or tried before.

We celebrated Halloween on Friday of this week, so we enjoyed some Halloween-themed books like Pumpkin Heads, The Pumpkin Book, Which Witch is Which, as well as Frankie Stein and Frankie Stein Starts School. The last two titles are by Lola Schaefer, and were shared with us from our Rm. 203 friends, because they are planning an author Skype with her later this quarter. We loved them, so maybe we’ll jump onto their Skype plan, too!

Oh, and we were inspired to read our final Ame Dyckman book (Tea Party Rules) when we opened an amazing box of book swag from her on Thursday. 🙂

Can’t wait to share this week’s books with you soon! I LOVE BOOKS! (can you tell?)

Oh, and if you missed our recent post on our Literary Lanterns, will you check it out, please? We had so much fun and did so much great thinking through decorating our character pumpkins. 🙂

Rm. 202 Literary Lanterns Project

A few weeks ago I started seeing tweets about Literary Lanterns and they were so interesting to me. Basically think of a pumpkin painted like your favorite book character, and that’s what they are. We toyed with the idea of doing this on a school level, but it didn’t happen, so Rm. 202 decided to do it for ourselves!

First I showed my friends some examples of some pumpkins other kids had created, since I figured most of them didn’t really didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. 🙂

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Then we brainstormed a list of characters kiddos would like to create, with two minor rules: NO ONE could do Piggie or Elephant and NO ONE could do the Pigeon, because well, EVERYONE would want to do those characters and that would be a very boring pumpkin display. Once everyone was clear on those guidelines (which really meant that EVERY OTHER BOOK CHARACTER in the world was fair game), kiddos got busy creating a list of ideas.

I pulled up our book pictures on our ActivBoard, and many also studied our door display (see? Another reason why this project has been SO GREAT!).

Originally I was going to take our ideas and make a list and then have everyone pick the one they wanted, but instead had them circle the one they most wanted to create on the list they first brainstormed. Then I just had to cross-reference everyone’s choice (which was much easier and much less work!) and surprisingly it all worked out really nicely. Some kiddos were paired up (if they chose the same book) and some worked alone.

These choices were made on a Friday, so that kiddos could then work at home over the weekend to secure their pumpkin and any other supplies they might need. To my surprise and delight, this showed up on Monday:

Once we had our pumpkins, our plans and some time, we got busy!!

Oh my goodness they looked great!

Then we had a super idea about how we’d share them with our Robinson friends. I asked Mrs. Meihaus if she would let us make a display of them in the library so we could show up our hard work and creativity, and she so kindly said YES! Most teachers at Robinson know about our #classroombookaday challenge and how this went along with our crazy reading love, so were interested in what we were doing anyway.

Then we had another great idea: we would use this project as the basis of our learning on elections and voting. Our display was set up, we created a sign to hang above our pumpkins and then everyone of them was numbered. I created a Google form for Robinson friends, family and teachers (anyone who views the display, really) to cast their votes and now we’re off! We are so proud and very excited to see what happens with this project now that it’s in place in the library. 🙂

And without further ado, here are our final products:

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We’d love to include you in our voting, too! If you’d like to vote for YOUR favorite pumpkin, scan the QR code or click on the link below and cast your vote! We’d LOVE to see how far this project can spread outside of our walls in Missouri, so please also share where you live! THANK YOU in advance!!

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goo.gl/PXrKZb

Happy Halloween 2016!

This year Halloween is on a Monday, but our school decided to have our Halloween festivities on Friday instead. We went ahead with our traditional Halloween Parade, which travels down the street near our school and snakes along the campus of Aberdeen Heights–a retirement residence next door. We have a great partnership with them and love to delight their residents with our cute costumes, big smiles and happy waves as we walk by.

This year, however, instead of having a typical “party” after the parade, we decided as a grade level to have a more low-key afternoon, and just watch a movie and have a snack. My kiddos seemed really excited about this (as excited as kiddos usually are for a “regular” party) and I was, too. Sometimes less is more. 🙂 I mean who doesn’t love some popcorn and a show? Oh, and throw in a couple of Oreos and it’s even better, right? I even heard a couple of friends say, “This is the best day ever!”

At our school, kiddos bring their costumes and put them on just before we leave for the parade. For us, that was around 1:45, which meant that they’d been waiting pretty much all day for it! Sometimes (which I am sure is not surprising) this can mean that kiddos are little more amped up and full of lots of pent-up energy.

What was SO great, though, was that instead of that reality, this was THE BEST putting-on-costume time I think I’ve EVER experienced with a group of kiddos. Part of it, I think , is that we really emphasized that costumes would be easy to put on and go over clothes (rather than having to have kiddos change anything), and so we could all just find a quiet spot in the room and quickly get ready. Kiddos gathered on the carpet after that, and we even had time to read two books before they called us to line up! Talk about efficient! Forgive me for not having better pictures of the parade, but I was busy having a great time like the kiddos and couldn’t snap pics of it!

When we returned, however, we did have a chance to capture pictures of our great costumes! We noticed that there were many costumes that went together, and so kiddos planned how we should group for our pictures. Check it out!

Superheroes!

Warriors!

Star Wars!

Monsters!

Miscellaneous-Amazing-Costumes-That-Are-Different-From-the-Rest!

We had so much fun! Happy Halloween from Rm. 202!!

Another Number Skype–Inside Robinson!

On Friday we were able to have another Mystery Number Skype, with some friends INSIDE ROBINSON! We’ve done this before, the last time I taught 1st grade when we were learning to Skype and we called Ms. Turken’s class who was in Mrs. Fry’s classroom. This time we answered a call from Mrs. Dix and Mrs. Bell and talked to their second graders. We were excited!

We are getting so good at this and at asking questions that knock out a large group of numbers at once. Our 2nd grade friends guessed our number and we did, too! What a great way to practice what we know about numbers and place value!

Do you want to Skype with us, too? Leave a message here, or tweet to us at @jbeardensclass @jbeardensclass. WE LOVE TO CONNECT!

Location Lessons and a Human Bookshelf!

This week during our visit to the library learning commons with Mrs. Meihaus, we had a lesson on how to find things in the library.

She taught us how to find things in the library, using call numbers. We learned the difference between FIC books (chapter books), E books (everybody picture books), and books that have PB in front of the FIC and E (which means that they are paperback). We also learned (or were reminded) that nonfiction books have numbers along with the first three letters of the author’s last name.

Then, she had us create our own call numbers–because we are all authors, after all! Some kiddos had blue cards that were for FIC books and yellow cards that meant we were E book authors. Kiddos wrote their call number on the sheet.

Then, we created HUMAN BOOKSHELVES, ordering ourselves based on our names on the shelf. This was really tricky, but since we are Roadrunners, and show our GRIT all the time, we did it!

Math Warm Ups: Week of Oct. 19-21, 2016

I used to blog our math warm-ups every week. Then this year I changed our warm-up plan again and sometimes they are questions other than math problems and so I never really got into that routine. This week, however, they were indeed all math warm-ups so I thought I’d share what we’ve been doing!

(This was a short week of school, with only 3 days and 2 warm-ups. Small but mighty math thinking!)

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My kindergartener, Allie, created this one for Rm. 2o2 kiddos and was very excited to share it with them. I was impressed with how they are getting better at telling stories and creating word problems to solve.

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Some highlights of the answers to this one:

We also tried one during math on Friday as an extension after we’d talked about the warm-up together. We’re learning how to use Padlet, so it’s been the place we’ve been sharing our thinking lately (and since we’re still working on the logistics, some friends didn’t quite get their answer on the board).

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Great thinking lately, Rm. 202 friends! More to come soon!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 9

This was a short week at school (we only had Weds-Fri), so our list is a little smaller than other weeks. But believe me it is no less amazing! (Oh, and by the way, I realized that picture looks like we’re a little closer to filling up our door than we actually are….still a couple more weeks away. 🙂 ).

Here’s the close up of the week (which I realized I don’t usually share):

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This week we started with another Mo Willems title we hadn’t read, as well as a Kate Klise book that kiddos read last year before she came to visit. On Thursday we were lucky to have Mrs. Sisul swing by with her brand-spanking new copy of Hotel Bruce, which she had promised to read to us when she came with Mother Bruce earlier this year. She had a great story about how she had gotten her copy from her favorite local bookstore and had also celebrated Bruce’s book birthday last Tuesday. We read two Pigeon books for our punctuation study, and The Reader for the Global Read Aloud this week. Two of our books were recommendations from our friend Rachel, and then lastly we were lucky to have a familiar 4th grade friend come and read to us on Friday. Remember when Allie came to read Naked to us? Well, during that visit they had asked if Riley could come, too, and Friday he finally came! His grade was having a whole day reading celebration and so he spent some of his time reading Mustache Baby Meets His Match to us. We LOVED it!

Another successful reading week! Our count is up to 161 so far, which is SO AMAZING! Can’t wait to see what this coming week holds! 🙂

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey