Reading final CYRM stories and doing Warsaw Ghetto lesson with 4th and 5th. Changed the lesson a little to have kids highlight the place in the article that gave them the answer to the question with the idea that this would help them in testing where they need to be able to find answers to questions on passages. Hard for them to keep from underlining whole sentences. Also did some whiteboard work with younger kids about preparing for winter to get them ready for Three Pebbles and a Song. Whiteboards worked pretty well with the predictable squabbles over pen colors.
Went to the district LMT professional development day Thursday. Some great stuff there. Good idea for bookbags for K's and 1's. Put a book the kid can read and a book that can be read to them in a bag. Make one bag for each kid. Check the books out to the room. Kids take home 1 bag per night. Result??? 300 books read or listened to by students in a year. Concern about losing books? San Francisco did it in their elementary schools and the highest number of books lost by any room was 3. Pretty impressive.
Also a great idea for running a contest where the kids have to read a book from a certain genre and do a summary in order to enter. Small prizes given. Interest and participation level seems to be high in the two schools that piloted it.
Another good idea from the keynote speaker. To avoid plagiarism, have teams of kids research a topic (several topics per classroom) and put together a report. At this point, plagiarism isn't a big issue. Then (the big trick!), pose a question that can only be answered by kids collaborating with information they have each gathered. Example given was do research on preparing for a specific type of disaster, then have kids in teams to write a diaster preparation manual for any disaster that might happen. Interesting.
So many good ideas, so much to do.
My, my, my. A week culminating in a fist fight between two 3rd grade boys over a poetry book. Hard to know whether to punish or commend!
Getting to the wire on CRYM books. Finish next week, vote the following. Did a good front-loading exercise with the Monday groups using the historical note at the end of Cats. Good opportunity to practice reading for information and getting some background information on the Warsaw Ghetto.
Found some books for Wendy to use with the 5th graders. Might be a good idea to build up a small, special library collection just for use with 2nd semester 5th graders -- a preview of some middle school-type titles... especially non-fiction.
Solidifying plans for next year to structure around the CYRM books, testing stuff (reference sources) and research. CYRM on check-out days and the other stuff for lessons. Thinking about using some kind of a pseudo "textbook" for 5th, maybe 4th, to give kids a sense of continuity in lessons. Also considering some kind of a product that would be created over a period of time to give them some tangible evidence of learning.
Went to a library conference this weekend. Some good stuff on next year's CYRM books and on customizing Google for school searches. Also stuff on catalog clean-up. Good ideas for continuing to improve lessons, resources and adminstrative stuff.
'nuff.
