Monthly Archives: February 2019

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The Winner of the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize Is…

Our 2nd graders gathered in the library for the 6th annual announcement of the Barrow Peace Prize. During this special ceremony, we connect with the team at Flipgrid. Each year, the Flipgrid team grows, and this year we connected with them at their headquarters in Minnesota and also in other locations where team members were working. The kids loved seeing their many faces on the screen celebrating their work.

Before our Skype, I showed students a map of places their voices were heard around the world. They were amazed by the pins in over 110 different locations and counting.

During our ceremony, we started with some introductions and greetings from the Flipgrid team. Then, we took time to hear some special stories from the project. Every year, we get comments on social media about the project which I share with the students. They love having a personal connection with people who have heard their voices.

This year, I had a message exchange with an individual from Canada. She messaged me through our library Facebook page, so I shared her message with the students.

Marion Hodges from Canada says: “greetings from Canada. For the kids who chose Jackie Robinson they might be interested to know that he started his pro career in Montreal with the Montreal Royals. He endured a lot of the same treatment but also a lot of respect. After that he went on to play with the Dodgers. For the kids who chose Rosa Parks – there is a lady named Viola Desmond who did something very similar in Nova Scotia in the 1940s as she refused to leave the “white-only” section of the cinema. She was a successful beautician and entrepreneur and you can see her picture on the Canadian 10 dollar bill.”

Next, we launched into awards. Each teacher selected 3 students to receive one of three awards:

  • Prolific Persuader: For using your persuasive techniques to encourage an authentic audience to vote for your civil rights leader.
  • Outstanding Openers: For using a creative hook to capture your audience’s attention from the very beginning of your persuasive writing.
  • Dynamic Designers: For creating an inspiring piece of art to accompany your persuasive writing and visually engage your audience.

Christine, Marty, and Sindy from Flipgrid announced these student winners. This is one of my favorite parts of the ceremony because the kids erupt in applause for their classmates as they walk up to receive the award. The Flipgrid team applauded each group of students and we took a quick picture with the screen.

Another tradition we have thanks to a former Barrow student is having students design the Barrow Peace Prize. This year, students applied to design the peace prize by submitting sketches or ideas for what it might look like. Six students were chosen. We met together in the library and found ways to combine our ideas into one prize. The design was created in Tinkercad and printed on our Makerbot 3D printer. Each of the designers received a medal. Every student who researched the winner of the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize also received a medal. Finally, each classroom received a medal for students to take turns wearing. Even though we have one winner of the prize, this is a project that we are all contributors to.

Finally came the moment kids have been waiting to hear. The Flipgrid team announced the winner of the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize.

Jackie Robinson received the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize. Kids once again erupted with cheers and applause.

All of the researchers of Jackie Robinson came up to received their medals and take a picture. As soon as students left, I updated our Smore page.

Once again, I was reminded of how special this project is. There are so many ways for students to get engaged with the content whether their strength is art, writing, reading, speaking, designing, or something in between. I love that it gets our student voices out into the world in a positive way and shows our students how far their voices can travel.

Thank you to all of our students and teachers for their hard work on this project. Thank you to all who voted. Thank you Capstone for getting us kicked off each year in our research with PebbleGo. Thank you Flipgrid for amplifying our student voice with your product and celebrating our work each year. We look forward to next year.

 

 

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Who Will Win?: A Research Lesson with 5th Grade

Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark. T-Rex vs. Velociraptor. Scorpion vs. Centipede.  These topics grab the attention of so many readers in our library.

When the 5th grade language arts teachers, Ms. Freeman & Ms. Hinkle, asked me to brainstorm some lessons ideas about the following standard, my mind immediately jumped to these popular books.

ELAGSE5RI8: EXPLAIN how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, IDENTIFYing which reasons and evidence supports which point(s).

I began to think about how students might create their own quick versions of these stories using books from our informational section.  Ms. Hinkle and Ms. Freeman scheduled each of their language arts classes to come to the library for 45 minutes.

We began our time together on the floor and took time to look at a selection of books from the Bug Wars, Dinosaur Wars, and Who Would Win series. I asked students how an author might go about comparing two animals who might not actually meet in real life. We brainstormed a list of categories that an author might use to compare animals: size, speed, abilities, classification, etc.

Next, we took a look at an interactive ebook from Capstone called Tyrannosaurus Rex Vs. Velociraptor from the Dinosaur Wars series. We looked at the structure of the book and how the author used size, speed/agility, weapons, and attack style to compare the two dinosaurs. In addition to the summaries at the top of the page, we saw how the author gave several pieces of evidence to backup the point of which dinosaur was superior to the other in a particular category.

This set us up for our work session. Ahead of time, I pulled multiple animals books from our library as well as a few other things that could be compared like weather events and landforms. When I pulled the books I considered which animals I might pair together if I was choosing, but I wanted students to have the choice of whichever pairings they wished to have.

With a partner, students selected two “things” to compare. This was a bit of a frenzy as students tried to quickly pair two animals or other things together before resources started to disappear to other partners.

Then, they used a brief graphic organizer to decide on 4 categories to compare the two things. I encouraged them to look at the index in the books to help them think about comparisons they might make.

Their goal was to find evidence for each thing in each category and then decide on a winner for that category based on the evidence.

After looking at the evidence for all 4 categories, students decided on the overall winner. Sometimes students couldn’t decide an overall winner, so I encouraged them to create some “what if” scenarios that might help them think about when one of the particular animals or things might come out on top. If time allowed, students could create a Flipgrid video explaining their comparisons.

The teachers and I circulated between the pairs of students and conferenced with them on their categories and pushed them to look for evidence. What we saw as we conferenced was that most students were excited and engaged.

They were really searching for information and putting books side by side to make comparisons. They were having critical conversations to determine which animal would actually win in each category based on the evidence they found.  They were even asking to see additional resources like websites and other books because they weren’t finding the info that they were looking for.

This project gave me lots to think about. The concept of competition between “things” was motivating for students. I didn’t give them a detailed graphic organizer with a bunch of pre-written questions they had to find answers to. They determined the categories and looked for the answers. I was surprised by how many students started asking for additional resources because they wanted to find the answer they were looking for rather than trying to make one resource work for everything as I’ve seen in other research projects.

Of course, everything wasn’t perfect and some students didn’t stay focused the entire time. However, I saw an engagement that I don’t always see. I saw students excited about diving into books without too many complaints that we weren’t researching on the computer. We also didn’t really have enough time for most students to record. The teachers are going to try to give time back in class to finish recordings.

I want to unpack this a bit more in my mind and think about implications for future projects. I definitely think that this project could be expanded to something much bigger. It was obtainable in a day, but it could be so much better with a little more time.

The students who were able to record so far would love for you to take a moment to watch their videos. If you decide to try this out with your students, I would love to hear how it goes and what modifications you made.

 

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Book Character Costumes on Parade: Our February Makerspace

Each year, we hold a Storybook Parade to celebrate our favorite books. This is a long-standing tradition at our school. Students choose a favorite book, dress up as that character, and parade down the sidewalks near our school to advertise their books to the community.

Classroom teachers do a wonderful job of supporting students in making costumes if they are unable to do that at home, but this year, I thought our February makerspace theme could be about costumes so that students could get a jump start on preparing for the parade.

Ahead of makerspace, Gretchen Thomas had her UGA students practice making their own costume pieces based on book characters to get warmed up. I made an introduction video for February’s costume theme and a Google doc signup for teachers to signup students at 11, 11:30, and 12:00 on Tuesdays & Thursdays.

I also went through our makerspace and gathered possible materials that students might use for costumes: felt, fabric scraps, yarn, cardboard, plastic tablecloths, various glue, pom poms, beads, and more.

I pulled several costume and fashion books from our makerspace genre section of the library as well as a few possible examples of books that could become character costumes.

When students signed up, they were signing up for a 3-week session on costume making to meet on Tuesdays & Thursdays. If students finished early, they could take their name off the list to allow others to come, but if they needed all 3 weeks, they could come. Each week, a different group of UGA students came to support our makers in grades 1-5.

During week 1, I met with all students on the carpet to set the stage for our time together. We looked at past storybook parade photos to see the wide variety of costumes people had. I also held up some of the picture books I had pulled and we brainstormed together some possible costume pieces that could be made for each character as well as what we could use that might already be in our closets.

At our tables, I put paper and pencils for students to do some planning as well as all of our costume/fashion books for ideas. Our goal was for each student to have a costume idea before gathering materials from the material table. From past experience, we’ve seen students just grab everything they see because they like it rather than think about what they truly need. We wanted students to be conscious of our makerspace materials and not creating excess waste.

As students gathered their materials with help from our UGA students, they spread out in the library at tables to start working. It took a lot of energy from all adults in the room because every student was creating something completely different. However, it was amazing to look around and see the collaborative creativity between our young makers and our UGA helpers. Many hidden talents and problem solving skills began to emerge.

We watched as cardboard became hats, ladybug wings, ninja swords, and candy bars.

Plastic tablecloths became dresses, skirts, and shirts.

Scraps of fabric were tied together into ninja clothes.

Felt and construction paper became cheetah spots and Little Elliot polka dots.

Cardstock, construction paper, and pipe cleaners became masks.

We all learned how to be resourceful with the materials we had and all worked together to figure out how to be costume designers with limited experience.

With so many works-in-progress, our storage room is a bit of a mess. We have costume pieces drying and stored on every shelf, table, and corner. As students return each day, they locate their own items with assistance from adults and continue the process. Students are allowed to take their costume pieces home, but I’m encouraging them to keep them here at school until our parade on March 8th so that they don’t get lost.

This was our first try at a costume making makerspace. It could use some fine tuning. It’s always a challenge to have so many different projects going at once where every student needs different materials and skill sets to create. However, our extra hands from UGA helps this part a lot. I would love to have a better plan for getting students started and gathering the materials that they each need.  Maybe each student needs a box or a tray where they could keep their items. Then these could be stacked on top of one another. I’m not sure, but I would love to debrief the experience with our students and the UGA students to get ideas for next year.

We can’t wait to see these costumes on parade very soon!

 

 

 

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Our Students Need Your Help to Decide the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize

Every year our Barrow 2nd graders embark on a month-long project to research 4 people from history and decide which person is most deserving of a peace prize that we named after our school. This project has gone through many changes over the years and is a project that we keep coming back to because so many standards are woven into it.

Our project begins with a Google Hangout with all 4 second grade classes. This year, we read Malala’s Magic Pencil and discussed her character traits. We also learned about the Nobel Peace Prize that Malala won. We used this information to create a list of character traits someone should show in order to be deserving of our peace prize.

Then, students researched 1 of 4 people from history using Pebble Go, Encyclopedia Britannica, and websites found in Destiny Discover. They gathered facts onto a Google doc shared with them in Google Classroom.

In art, students created an image of their person using watercolors.

In writing, students used their facts to craft a persuasive piece of writing to convince an audience to vote for their person from history.

Finally, students recorded their artwork and writing using Flipgrid so that it could be viewed by a worldwide audience.

That’s where you come in. Our 2nd graders want you to hear their voices. They want you to listen to videos about each of the 4 nominated historical figures and decide which person should win the 2019 Barrow Peace Prize. You can access all of the videos on this Smore.

At the top and bottom of the Smore is a Google form where you can cast your vote. Voting starts now and will end on February 24 at 12:00PM EST. We will announce the winner of the Barrow Peace Prize when we Skype with the Flipgrid team in Minnesota in early March.  Every student who researched the winning historical figure will be awarded a 2019 Barrow Peace Prize medal created on our 3D printer.

We hope you will watch and vote. We also hope you will share this project with your own students, networks, or people in your community. Anyone can vote. The students love seeing where people have viewed their projects and how many votes were cast.

Who will win? You decide! Click here to start.

 

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Kindergarten Exploring How Books Are Made: Authors, Illustrators, Editors, & Publishers

Kindergarten has launched into an exploration of “how-to” writing. In class, they’ve been thinking a lot about the steps it takes to make something. They’ve been taking these steps and writing their own “how-to” books.

As a part of this exploration, they are also exploring how books are made. The teachers each scheduled 2 sessions in the library. During the 1st session, we split the class into 3 groups to rotate through centers related to how books are made. Since this was Kindergarten, we had me, the classroom teacher, and the classroom paraprofessional to lead the centers that I planned.

Center 1: Read Aloud

We used How This Book Was Made by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex. In true Mac Barnett form, this book is filled with humor that was a little bit above the heads of some Kindergarten friends, but there’s a lot of great info on the process that a book goes through to end up in our hands. The book goes over the role of the author taking an idea and turning it into a draft. It also hits home the idea of writing multiple drafts of a book and getting feedback from an editor that is sometimes hard to receive.  Next the book takes us through the illustrator’s role of creating pictures for the author’s words. It shows students how the book is printed and put together before it is shipped to the shelves to await a reader.

To me, one of the best lines in this book happens at the end when Mac writes, “a book can have words and pictures and paper and tigers, but a book still isn’t a book, not really, until it has a reader”.

Center 2: Video

I pulled together a variety of videos so that we could pick and choose pieces of videos to play and discuss with students. One video from Capstone walks through the process of making a book from an idea to the printing.

If students were really interested in how a book is actually put together, we spent more time with this Discovery video.

I also wanted students to hear from some authors. There are many options to choose from, but I pulled an interview with Jacqueline Woodson. She shares more details about ideas, characters, and rewriting.

Since students are exploring how to make their own books, I also wanted them to see some different options than what we might have in our library. They watched just a bit of this video showing elaborate pop-up books by Robert Sabuda.

We could pause the videos along the way and let kids make noticings or ask questions about how books are made.

Center 3: Writing & Illustrating

At this writing center, students put themselves in the shoes of an author and illustrator. Since our time was limited, we weren’t writing a full story. Instead, students finished the stem “Once upon a time there was….”.  Students filled in whatever they wanted to as the author.

We talked about how often an author and illustrator don’t meet in person. The publisher might assign a text to an illustrator and the publisher is the one who communicates with that person. To mimic this, students sent their writing to someone else at the table. That person read the text and created an illustration to go with the text.

This was a challenge for some students because they saw that the illustrator didn’t always draw things the way they had pictured it in their mind. We used this “conflict” to connect with what published authors and illustrators sometimes face.

Closing:

We came back together after our 3 experiences and took a glance around the library as the books sat on the shelves around us. We talked about how every book on our shelves has gone through a journey to make it to our shelves. Students shared some of the journey that they remembered from the various centers.

Next up, students will be working in the art classroom to make their own bound book.  Then, they will return to the library to explore the “how-to” books.

 

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Celebrating World Read Aloud Day 2019

We’ve been celebrating World Read Aloud Day for several years now. In fact, World Read Aloud Day was my first venture into Skyping with other classrooms around the world, and it helped me make connections to so many teachers and librarians that I continue to collaborate with today.

World Read Aloud Day was established by LitWorld as a way for us to celebrate our freedom and right to read aloud. Stories connect us, and when we read aloud together, we make connections between places, cultures, and so much more.

Back in November, I started getting teachers in my school to sign up for World Read Aloud Skype sessions via a Google Doc. I took those time slots and added them to the World Read Aloud Doc that was shared by me and Shannon McClintock Miller. Every year, that massive doc helps teachers and librarians connect classes across multiple time zones around the world to share stories.

As we found connections, I made a plan with each connecting author or educator so that we knew what story we would share. As usual, when the week of World Read Aloud arrived, we had to be prepared for technical difficulties, school closings, and sick children. Even with some barriers in our way, we made many connections this week. Here are a few of the highlights.

Monday 1/28/19

We kicked off the week with Donna MacDonald and her students reading Snappsy the Alligator. I love how this book is perfect for two voices to read aloud.

Ingrid Mayyasi’s students read Be Quiet to my Kindergarten students. It was so great to hear a group of 4th graders become the characters in the story. It really made us see how much this story could become a reader’s theater in the classroom.

Tuesday 1/29/19

Kelly Hincks and I shared Narwhal & Jelly with 2 PreK classes. Kelly’s students sang the Narwhal & Jelly song by Emily Arrow. It was so much fun to see how a story and music could connect us together. It didn’t take long for my students to start singing along and doing the motions to the song.

Kristen Mogavero’s AP English students read aloud a chapter book to our 4th graders. They shared a lot of information about their high school which was a great connection to our College and Career Week coming up next week.

Author Deborah Freedman read the book Shy to our 4th graders. They prepared questions in advance to ask her and learned a lot about why has written several stories about animals and where she gets her ideas.

Our 5th graders did a mystery hangout with April Wathen and her students in Maryland. Since we had older readers, we took turns reading aloud favorite poetry.

Wednesday 1/30/19

We were hit with several weather cancellations this day, but we were able to connect with a very fun class in Texas thanks to Nancy Jo Lambert. Our students read selections from the book Can I Touch Your Hair? This book features poems about race, friendship, and mistakes. Our students had a great time reading together and lots of laughs as we asked each other questions. I think our favorite question from them was “Do you like to eat Mexican food?” We all took a turn to share some of our favorite foods. We hope we can connect together again sometime.

https://twitter.com/ReedyLibrary/status/1090838158407843840

Thursday 1/31/19

One of our connections on this day was with Nikki Robertson in Leader, TX. We both had 1st graders and read the book The Rabbit Listened. This was such a fun story to share for WRAD because it gave us a chance to talk about our emotions and the importance of listening to someone and giving them space when they need it. Students in both places had so many insights on why the rabbit was the one who helped Taylor the most in the story.

Friday 2/1/19

On the official day of World Read Aloud, we connected with 3 different authors. Phil Bildner gave us a sneak peek of one of his upcoming books by reading the first chapter. Anne Marie Pace shared her book Groundhug Day. Angela DiTerilizzi shared her newest book Just Add Glitter.

Each of these amazing authors also answered questions from students about writing (and a few other random things). Getting to step up to the camera and speak directly to an author is such a powerful moment for students. It makes a deep connection between the book we hold in our hands and an actual person in the world.

Every year, I make a Google Tour Builder map of our connections. After each class connects, we add a pin to the map and type in what book we read together. I love seeing the visual of all of our pins connected together because every story we share connects us across the miles with new friends. We learn about what connects us together and also what makes us all unique. These Skype connections remind us that we are not alone in the world and that in every town there are people doing some of the same things we are.

Thank you to every author, illustrator, classroom, and library who made connections this week. Your voices and stories made an impact this week. We look forward to connecting again next year.