Our skype connections continued today with 7 more fun read aloud experiences for our students.
Edie Crook Gastonia, NC
Okle Miller Tampa Fl
Cherie Smeltzer New Hampshire
Shawna Ford Texas
Jenny Lussier e Connecticutt
Wendy Garland Massachussetts
Shannon Miller Iowa
We started our day connecting with Edie Crook and her students in Gastonia, NC. We had fund reading I’m Bored and then saying the word “boring” in different ways.
Next, Okle Miller and I read aloud Same, Same but Different. Our kids had fun talking about what was the same but different about life in Athens and Tampa.
We did our very first skype with PreK today when we connected with Cherie Smeltzer and her students. They read Yes Day to us and we had fun thinking of what we would ask for on our own yes day.
Shawna Ford’s students read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild to us, and I read Same, Same but Different to them. We had a great discussion about the importance of reading picture books at every age. Shawna compared it to how Disney movies have something that kids understand but some deeper meaning that mostly adults understand. My kids really grabbed onto the idea.
Jenny Lussier and I had a blast reading aloud Crankee Doodle to our students. It is a hard book to read without cracking up! I loved how our students suggested great books to read.
Wendy Garland and I read aloud This is Not My Hat. Our students had a lot of opinions about what happened at the end. We had a great discussion about the term “just right” and how this book was chosen as a “just right” book for our skype.
I loved ending the day by reading aloud Flora & Ulysses to Shannon Miller’s students. We had to get a bit creative on how to show the comics since Shannon’s copy was checked out, but we made it work. The kids are all excited about the book and our copy that just arrived today was immediately checked out.
I can’t believe there’s only one day of connections left. Tomorrow has several fun and surprising moments in store. I can’t wait t end our week with some more great stories, authors, students, and librarians.
Today is officially World Read Aloud Day. We have been celebrating all week and will continue on Thursday and Friday. Today can only be described as miraculous! Here’s a look at our day.
We started by connecting with Donna MacDonald and her students in South Burlington, Vermont. Our students did a reader’s theater of One Cool Friend. We divided the parts up between our students so that voices in both states were helping to tell the story. Students got a chance to find out about state symbols and the weather, but we loved meeting all of Mrs. MacDonald’s library pets!
Next, we connected with Matthew Winner and his students in Elkridge, MD. We shared the book The Story of Fish and Snail by Deborah Freedman. We took turn reading pages. He had 1st graders who read the pages with him, while I had Kindergarten where I read the pages. Our students also had a chance to ask once another questions.
Next, we began connecting with several authors. Our first connection was with Anne Marie Pace. She is the author of Vampirina Ballerina and Vampirina Ballerina Hosts a Sleepover. During our connection, she taught the kids a great song about how a book is made and had them sing along.
Then, she read Vampirina Ballerina. It has so many interesting vocabulary words. On one page, she had the students stand up and dance with her to practice one of the ballet moves.
Another thing I love is when authors point out details in the illustrations and how they connect with the rest of the story. Anne Marie pointed out Vampirina’s final pose and how it was the same pose as her ballet idol posted in her bedroom.
Next, a very miraculous thing happened. We skyped with Kate DiCamillo! As you know, she has won 2 Newbery medals and has just been named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. A few weeks ago we were contacted by the amazing people at LitWorld with an opportunity to be in a multi-school Skype. I immediately said yes and the planning began. Most of our 2nd grade attended with a few 3rd graders. It was so inspiring. We started with a roll call of schools.
Kate shared a poem from one of my favorite poets, Joyce Sidman. Then, she started taking questions from schools. This was followed by some reading from Flora & Ulysses. The moderator also read aloud part of Kate’s first draft of Because of Winn Dixie, and I loved how Kate covered her ears because she didn’t want to hear how it sounded.
Kate took some more questions from schools and ended by having the adults at each school share what they were reading to students. When it came to me, I just had to tell Kate how I have read p. 130 of Flora & Ulysses numerous times to the students of Barrow and how “Expect the Miraculous” has become a mantra in our library and throughout our school. She turned to p. 130, found the part, and read it aloud. It was such a special moment (as you can see from my reaction at the end).
This was an amazing experience for our students. They were hanging on every word and sat attentively for 1 hour and 15 minutes! Our local newspaper was also in attendance to document the event. I can’t thank LitWorld and Candlewick Press enough for this opportunity. It was inspiring and definitely connected us with so many people through stories, which is Kate DiCamillo’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature platfrom. During this call, we connected with the following schools along with Kate DiCamillo:
Mason-Rice Elementary School Newton, MA
Minnetonka Middle School West Minnetonka, MN
Van Meter Community School Van Meter, IA
Saint Mary Catholic School Paw Paw, MI
Ducketts Lane Elementary School Elkridge, MD
American School Foundation Mexico – ASFM Monterrey, Mexico
Roosevelt Elementary Jamestown, ND
Later in the day, we connected with author Barbara O’Connor along with Sherry Gick and her students in Rossville, Indiana. Barbara read aloud from How to Steal a Dog.
Then, students in each state had a chance to ask her some questions. We learned about her 2 dogs, Martha & Ruby, as well as where the inspiration for the book came from. Mrs. Wright’s 2nd grade class loved connecting since they had just finished the book as a class read aloud.
Mrs. Stuckey’s class connected with author Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw and Shannon Miller’s students in Van Meter, IA. She read her book Same, Same But Different. We loved hearing her sing Kailash’s alphabet.
Then, she gave us a peek inside her art studio where we saw some paintings from her new book Luna and Me, which will be out in spring. We can’t wait to see this book in print! Students also got to ask her questions about her work. It was fun to see her thought process as the author and illustrator of the book, and we learned that she does both together.
We ended our day with the entire 5th grade skyping with author Tanya Lee Stone. She read to us from Almost Astronauts.
This was followed by a chance for students to ask her questions. They had several specific questions about the book, but we also learned how thorough Tanya is when she researches. I loved that she included that she uses the Internet to research, but that she makes sure she is using reliable sources. It was also fascinating to hear that books like Courage Has No Color took 10 years to write! That was a powerful statement after students were complaining about a 2 hour writing test.
I love World Read Aloud Day. I love sharing stories aloud, but even more than that, I love knowing that words are filling the air all around the world on this day and across this week. I love that people are using social media to publicly profess their love of reading, their favorite books, and their celebrations of their freedom and right to read. I love that stories really are connecting us to one another on this day and every time we share a story out loud.
Our celebration will continue for the next 2 days before we are off for spring break. We will continue working on a Google Tour that will show all of our connections with a summary of each one. Look for that in Friday’s post! Happy World Read Aloud Day!
We had another incredible day of connecting with classrooms and authors. At the end of the week, I will share our Google Earth tour that summarizes our entire week. For now, here are some pictures and videos from our connections today.
Erika Victor 3rd grade Berlin, Germany
Jennifer Reed Kindergarten Massachussetts
Heather Temske 4th Roswell, GA
Laura D’Elia 3rd Massachussetts
Christy Brennan 5th Pennsylvania
Shanon Miller Iowa
Shannon Miller 4th/5th grade Iowa & Author Deborah Freedman!
What a way to start the week for Read Across America and World Read Aloud Day. Our morning kicked off with about 40 guest readers (2 in every classroom PreK-5th). First, these readers gathered in the library to select books. Many thanks to Kim Ness for checking all of the readers in and Julie Moon for setting up our Signup Genius which kept us organized. They were full of energy and spent time connecting with one another, sharing stories, and getting pumped up to read to classrooms.
After a group picture, our 5th grade BTV crew escorted readers to classrooms and they got started sharing Dr. Seuss books, laughing, and learning with our students. It was so much fun to go around the school and hear Seuss words filling the air, seeing kids smiling, and hearing their laughter.
Following this, we started the first of 36 Skype sessions to celebrate Read Across America and World Read Aloud Day. We are creating a Google Earth Tour as we connect, so I will post that at the end of the week. For now, I’ll share some images and video from our week. Today, we connected with:
Okle Miller 2nd grade, Tampa FL
Crystal Hendrix Asheville, NC
Wendy Garland 4th grade Massachussetts
Jennifer Reed 3rd grade Massachussetts & Peter Reynolds
I tried out the product myself and had a lot of fun clicking on the fun little characters carrying signs with words of interest. I could give a thumbs up, thumbs down, or a heart to each sign. This helped the program start finding other topics I might like. When I reached a point where I felt done, the program took me to a tree with branches for each of my love categories. Within these categories were suggested books and movies I might read or watch. If I saw a book I knew I wouldn’t like, I could delete it so that it could be replaced by other books. I also learned that I could add additional branches to my tree.
This week, my tech crew of 5th grade boys tried out Wandoo Planet for themselves. I tweeted a picture of their beta test and immediately started having a conversation with Lindsey Hill at Evanced Games. She wanted to hear their thoughts, so we set up a time to connect.
After some quick introductions, the boys launched right into talking about what they liked and what they wished or wondered. The boys talked about:
Being able to search for specific topics rather than wait on the animals to bring the topics to them
Trying to cut down the time it takes to build your tree
Wondering which age groups the product would actually be for
Wondering how topics are suggested to them.
Wanting mini games within the program. Educational mini games that tie to the book topics that are suggested.
Wanting more choices to choose from
Wanting to start with broader topics and narrow down to specific
Wanting the tool to be available on the computer, iTuness, and Google Play
Wanting music and sounds
The boys found out that several of their ideas and suggestions are already being worked on, but aren’t yet available in the beta version. I loved that these students experienced the idea of a “rough draft” from their writing classrooms and how those rough drafts are being revised several times. I want to help them make that connection more when we meet again on Tuesday. This was a great real world example that revision impacts more than just writing a paper for class. It’s a big part of many of our careers.
The powerful piece in this is that these students’ voices were heard. Lindsey told them that every comment they made was going to be carried to the developers to improve Wandoo Planet for future users of the tool. I am really excited about this tool because I think it is one more piece to help students discover their interests, connect to books/games/movies/sites that support those interests, and more. As a librarian, I see this being a way to give students ideas for growing the collection to include things that matter to them.
This group is going to continue to use Wandoo Planet on Tuesday and then reconnect with Lindsey on Wednesday of next week along with Shannon Miller and her students in Van Meter, Iowa. We can’t wait!
Our 2nd grade spectrum students have been studying graphic novels. We started by watching this video from Capstone Press.
Then, students started looking at all of the graphic novels in our library and noticing elements of a graphic novel. They identified speech bubbles vs. thought bubbles vs. captions. They looked at the inking and colors chosen as well as the layout on the page. After several days of exploring graphic novels, students began working on their own. They go through a process of storyboarding, thumbnail sketches, etc.
In our library, some of our favorite graphic novels are by Capstone Press. We can’t keep Princess Candy on the shelves. In addition to our print graphic novels, we have several simultaneous access ebooks that are graphic novels.
Each year we try to think about experiences that we can offer the students in this project to support their development of their own stories. Sometimes we have a guest speaker come in and do some cartooning. However, this year I reached out Amy Cox and the wonderful people at Capstone Press. Amy connected me with Bob Lentz who works on graphic novels and Ashlee Suker who works on graphic nonfiction.
This dynamic duo put together a presentation to show our students how a graphic novel is put together from the beginning to the end. We got to see how the story is planned over a specific number of page layouts. We saw how text fits into the various boxes on each layout. From this text, we also got to see the instructions that are sent to an illustrator along with research links to inform the historical aspects of a nonfiction graphic.
Every page that Ashlee showed got several oohs and ahhhs from students. They loved to see how a character went from a thumbnail sketch to a full color character in the book. It was also interesting to see the initial attempt at creating a character and how that character changed. Sometimes the final character was a combination of several sketches put together.
Bob and Ashlee paused a lot along the way for students to ask questions. Some of their questions were about upcoming projects while others were about where ideas come from. I loved when students thought about specific questions that would help them with their own project. I also loved when Bob asked the students how many pages their graphic novels were going to be. Answers ranged from 12 pages to a full box set of several graphic novels!
Bob and Ashlee closed with a preview of upcoming Capstone titles for the fall. The students saw a lot of books that they want in our library. It was perfect timing because our student book budget group is about to start and graphic novels is once again a category that they will be purchasing books in. These 2nd graders are sending their recommendations to this group, and I’m sure we’ll see several Capstone graphic novels on our shelves soon. Thank you Capstone Press for being a continuing supporter of the programs we offer in our library. You are appreciated!
Our 2nd graders just wrapped up a huge research project. During the project, they chose a leader from black history, researched that person, wrote a short persuasive piece about their person, designed a US postage stamp, and recorded a video using Flipgrid. Their videos were pulled together on a Smore which included a Google Form for people to vote on their favorite leader from black history to be featured on a postage stamp. Read more about our project:
Along the way, the students had several connections to an authentic audience. They started the voting portion of the project by sharing at our schoolwide assembly. Students stood in front of the entire school and told about the project as well as shared a video from each question of the grid. The Smore was emailed to every teacher and student in the school.
Shawna Ford, librarian in Weatherford Texas, saw my tweet and had her 2nd grade students view the project.
As the project continued, my posts and tweets were shared and retweeted until our Smore had 480 views and counting.
Our project was viewed in 161 locations and counting.
Throughout the project, Charles Miller and Bradford Hosack, our friends at Flipgrid, were following along and sharing our work as well. It has been an incredible experience for students to use a tool, encounter success and frustrations, and be able to offer feedback to developers that respond to that feedback. The Flipgrid team has been so responsive to all of the feedback we have provided to them, and they consistently work on Flipgrid to make it better.
Today, our 2nd graders came together in the library to connect with the Flipgrid team via Skype. The team shared information about how Flipgrid was developed and talked to the kids about coding. All of the 2nd graders had background in this concept because they all participated in the Hour of Code back in December. I loved how the Flipgrid team reiterated what I had told the students many times. You have to work through the frustration. You have to be willing to fail and learn from your failures to make things better. The team said more than one time that they wanted to create a tool that works for users, so they are constantly listening to users of Flipgrid to improve their product. I hope that the students carry these ideas into all area of their lives to be willing to take risks and work hard at what they are passionate about.
Charles and the Flipgrid team then gave us some stats about our videos.
1875 people watched the student videos
699 people clicked on the heart to like videos that the students made
students created 1 hr 15 minutes of video all together
During this presentation of facts, Charles reminded students that when they make a project like this and share it with the world it really is giving them a global voice. I loved that he said this because it is something we strive for in our library: giving students a global voice.
One of my favorite parts of our Skype was the awards. We wanted to honor several students during this segment. Because each video was “liked” by viewers of the video, I could easily see which videos had the most likes. This became an award category. We also had specific students who received shout-outs on Twitter because people watched the videos and cared enough to specifically name a student video that they loved. Finally, we had some students who worked really hard to express themselves in their writing and persuade people to vote. I created a certificate to use.
After selecting all of the students, I sent a list of the awards to the Flipgrid team and they announced the winners via Skype. It felt like the Academy Awards as the Flipgrid team cheered for students as I handed out the certificates, and it was amazing to hear the shouts and claps of all of the 2nd graders cheering on their peers.
Mixed in with our connection the kids had a chance to ask the Flipgrid team questions. I loved the moments where one student said “sometimes it doesn’t work” and another student said “I think you need to be able to turn up the volume for people who talk soft”. These weren’t questions, but the Flipgrid team let the students know that because of their videos they were already thinking about volume and that they were working to make sure Flipgrid always worked for users.
During and after our Skype, the Flipgrid team and I shared several pictures from both sides of the Skype: Georgia & Minnesota.
We closed our time together by revealing the results of the overall voting for the favorite leader from black history to be on a postage stamp. The votes were extremely close, but Rosa Parks came in just 1 vote ahead of Jesse Owens. By this point, the kids were so excited about all that had happened with their project that the vote didn’t even seem to matter anymore.
Thank you to Charles Miller, Bradford Hosack, and the entire Flipgrid team for helping us celebrate this project today before we move on to our next adventures in the library. Thank you!
“Kids are genius. They don’t perceive limits or boundaries in the ways that hinder most adults. Their solutions to life’s problems can seem convoluted, indirect, and unnecessary, but often the ideas of kids can be the most profound.”
#Geniuscon gives kids the freedom to explore one question: If you could change one thing about your school, what would you do?
Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade classroom has teamed up with me in the library to explore this question. Mrs. Ramseyer and I sat down and mapped out some times, topics, and standards on the media center calendar. We wanted time for: brainstorming, question development, research, product development, and sharing. Our timeline spans from now until May. We devoted most of our time to research and product development.
I also met with Gretchen Thomas, who teaches at the University of Georgia. She has several of her students who are interested in partnering with us throughout this project. Their main role will be to facilitate students during the research process to help them think of all of the possibilities of where to find the answers to their burning questions. They aren’t there to give answers but rather to build bridges over barriers that students might face.
Today was our official kickoff. To start, we watched this video:
The kids immediately began yelling “Why don’t you just walk up the stairs?” It was hilarious. The whole point of watching the video was to bring up the idea that we often hold the solutions to our problems if we take the time to look inside ourselves rather than immediately yelling for help. We spent some time talking about the word “genius” and how we all have genius ideas within us.
Next, we read Rose’s Garden by Peter H. Reynolds. In this story, Rose travels the world collecting seeds. She finally decides to stop and explore a city where she discovers a patch of land in need of color. This is where she decides to start making her mark on the world by planting her seeds. Without giving too much away, her efforts inspire a community with her genius idea.
I loved how this book fit into our discussion of what it means to be genius. It moved us straight into our #Geniuscon question. Mrs. Ramseyer and I had already talked about how we didn’t want to influence how the kids answered the question, but we did want to give them an opportunity to brainstorm before they chose their focus topic. We put the question on 2 big pieces of paper and split the class in half. Each student had a marker to participate in a Chalk Talk, a silent conversation. All students began writing their responses to the questions as well as asked one another questions about their ideas. All of this was done in writing. Mrs. Ramseyer, Mrs. Vaughn (EIP teacher), and I all added to the conversation too.
After about 10 minutes, students mingled between the two chalk talks to cross pollinate their ideas.
We moved our 2 chalk talks to the floor and all stood around them. As we looked at or responses, I asked students to look for ideas that stood out to them or topics that seemed to be coming up. We identified ideas such as:
Additions to our school: adding more playground equipment, building a garden, expanding our school
Changes to rules: additional books on the max checkout in the library, additional “be’s” to our 5 be’s,
Technology: taking home iPads and netbooks, being able to bring technology from home, using our 3D printer
Behavior: addressing the bullying in our school, being kind
And more!
The pages were so filled with ideas that we couldn’t really talk about them all. After this discussion, we sat down for a big surprise: a Skype with Peter H. Reynolds! Peter was in Florida doing some work, and he took time out of his busy day to join us. After saying a quick hello, students took turns stepping up to the webcam and saying what they wanted to change about our school. Peter validated each student’s idea and even expanded upon the idea with his own thoughts. He encouraged students to think about how they could illustrate each of their ideas and turn it into a book, which the students are very interested in doing now. We will probably make this an additional piece to our project: possibly even an extension into the art room!
We closed out our time with Peter Reynolds with a friendly goodbye and the encouraging words of “connecting the dots” and “making our mark on the world”. We can’t think him enough for taking time to visit with us. He is such an advocate for allowing students to show off their genius and let their creative energy flow.
In class, students will begin to finalize their topics and next week they will return to the library to develop questions to prompt their research. What an exciting start!
We will actually celebrate all week long….March 3rd through the 7th.
One of my favorite connected educator friends, Shannon Miller, and I have been planning our collaboration and teaching plans for 2014 so of course World Read Aloud Day was a very important part of this. We decided to write this post and start planning, connecting, and sharing the excitement for this day.
This is always such a special day for celebrating the power of literacy….and one of the best for our libraries, schools, and students too.
This year we are excited for even more of these special connections.
If you are interested in connecting with others on this day, please add your name, schedule, and ideas to the information in the Google Doc that we started. This will begin to fill up with others around the world as they want to connect their students and schools too.
We plan to celebrate throughout that entire week….March 3-7th.
Also, check out all the wonderful activity ideas and resources that LitWorld has included on their website here.
The classroom kit is great! We love how it contains suggestions for read-aloud, suggestions for group activities, and a fundraising guide to support LitWorld and their programs.
Let us know if you have any questions on how this works. One of the fun parts is collaborating and throwing around ideas with each other.
Have fun and get connected for World Read Aloud Day this year too.
What fun! Today we participated in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record. Since 2006, Jumpstart has been encouraging people around the world to break the record for the most people reading aloud the same book. This year, the book was Otis by Loren Long. We Give Books provided free access to this book for anyone who wanted to read it online. At the same time you were reading for the record, you were also supporting book donations around the world.
Today, 4 classes at Barrow participated in the media center, while some others read the book in their own classrooms. Each class was a bit different in what we did with the book.
Mrs. Clarke’s PreK class is studying cooperation. We used Capstone’s PebbleGo Social Studies database to learn about the word cooperation. Then, we gave examples from our own lives and classroom of how to cooperate. As we read Otis aloud, we talked about how cooperation was shown in the book. We also talked about how we were cooperating with people all around the world to read for the record.
Read for the Record through the years.
In Mrs. Watson’s 1st grade, we looked at the data from Read for the Record through the years. We also read about tornadoes on PebbleGo and made connections to Otis and the Tornado. 1st grade is studying weather along with their study of The Wizard of Oz so Otis and Otis and the Tornado were a perfect fit.
In Mrs. Wright’s 2nd grade class, we Skyped with Mrs. Lussier in Connecticut. We had also connected with her 4th grade students during Talk Like a Pirate Day, so it was fun to reconnect. We took turns reading pages in the book and then added to a friendship padlet. Since October is bullying awareness month, we used Otis to talk about being kind and showing friendship rather than bullying.
Showing pictures to Mrs. Techman’s students.
In Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade class, we Skyped with Mrs. Techman in Charlottesville, VA. I read the entire book to both classes and shared the pictures on the camera. Our students stopped along the way and made predictions for one another. We also took some time to tell about our own communities. We looked at a map of how far away VA is and how long it would take to walk or drive. Students wanted to know how long it would take to fly, so we pulled up a travel website and searched for a flight. We also took time to add to the Padlet in this class, and Mrs. Techman’s class will add to it tomorrow.
While all of this was going on, I also tweeted the link to the padlet. It was retweeted numerous times, so hopefully others will add to it. Shawn Hinger and her students at Clarke Middle in Athens took time to add their own thoughts on friendship. It was nice to have a middle school voice among the elementary ideas.
Once again, I was amazed by the power of connecting and how many standards can be woven into an event such as this. I can’t wait to see what the record was set at today!
Expect the Miraculous 