Listen. Connect. Empower.

Our Global Read Aloud project this year was a collaboration between my 1st and 2nd graders and Becky Swanson's 1st and 2nd graders in Clarendon Hills, Illinois.  This project was over a year in the making.  I met Becky at NerdCamp in 2015 and we reconnected at NerdCamp 2016 where we decided to work together to have shared learning experiences between our students.  Excited about sharing Lauren Castillo work we began to plan. My students began by brainstorming what a community was: Next we read Nana in the City  like our new friends and divided into groups to describe what our community is like for our new friends.   We described our Weather (what it is like in the summer and the winter) Town (how we get around, important places and people) Sports (local sports teams) Geography (proximity to bodies of water, mountains, large cities) School life (name of school, grades attending, how we get there, the best thing about it) Groups shared t...

In our final week on the topic of "leadership" students were asked to view each other's work and think critically about it.  Students scanned a QR code and viewed all of the completed infographics .  Their job was to read critically and identify one that they agreed with and one that they disagreed with and provide their reasoning. While most students could easily identify a character and defense they agreed with, it was much more challenging for them to find one to disagree with.  The most common "leader" they disagreed with Greg Heffley. Now our project and our elections season is complete.  We read, shared ideas, worked independently or in small groups, wrote, created infographics, and thought critically about them.

Students spent the last two weeks preparing their thoughts and ideas about leadership.  They identified the qualities of good leaders and selected book characters that exemplified these qualities. This week they took their writing and created an infographic about the leadership characteristics of their character. Students used the app Pic Collage to create.  I had students include the following items: ______ has the qualities of a good leader. Quality #1 Quality #2 Quality #3 First name/s Only some of my students had used Pic Collage before, but it is very intuitive and they were very independent.  In 30 minutes I was able to explain the expectations and have them complete this project.  (It was rather tight in 3rd grade, but 4th and 5th graders had no problem getting this done in the allotted timeframe).  Some of my students' work follows: To conclude this project we needed to view each other's ...

We started class this week with a new spin on discussing our reading .  I am noticing that many of the same students are sharing their reading every week.  While this is exciting that they are comfortable sharing, this also means that there are many who are NOT contributing to the conversation.  This week I broke the class into small groups and had each person share something they are reading or something they just read in the small group. When we shared back to the class, I asked for 1 spokesperson from the group to report out a book that someone ELSE in the group shared.  My hope was that this would get them sharing and listening to one another.  I believe it did just that. The leadership conversation continued this week.  We began by looking at the list of leadership qualities we created last week. Now it was time for students to begin the reverse thinking - what character from a book exhibits these leadership qualities?  Students d...

In this election season it would be a shame to let the opportunity pass to talk about voting and voicing your opinion.  However, in THIS election season it would also be a nightmare to discuss politics, so I took a more gentle approach with the subject.  The goal of the class was to identify qualities of a good leader.   We began each class brainstorming what qualities a good leader exemplifies. Next, I read Harold and the Purple Crayon to the class, prompting students to think about what qualities Harold had that demonstrated good leadership.  I explained that I felt that Harold modeled many qualities that good leaders have and let small groups brainstorm these and then share back with the group. Each class now had a list of qualities they believed a good leader should have.  This list will be revisited next class when the assignment is reversed and students then have to find a character that fits the leadership qualities they identified....

This week with my 3rd-5th grade classes we established our “hopes and dreams” for library this year.  As a responsive classroom school, this is an important part of the structure of our class.  The last two weeks established expectations and routines and now I was ready to move us forward.   After sharing our personal reading, I read Dan Yaccarino’s I am a Story and shared that my hope and dream is that I will help students find books that will “stay with them” this year in library.  I wish to help students find books that they can connect with.  Our two activities were created to help me do this.   First, I had students work independently or with a small group to brainstorm books that they felt we needed in our library.   According to this student, all we need are Raina Telgemeier books! I like to gather this information from the students in the fall so I have time (and money) to do just that.  While I like to think that I a...

Our school is a responsive classroom school.  Last week we decided what our school expectations looked like in the library (being respectful, responsible and safe).  We have a new school behavior plan and this week I decided to take a closer look at our routines and how our behavior plan looks in the library.  The goal of this week's lesson with 3rd-5th graders was to review routines to reduce transition time and utilize more instructional time. New this week was the arrival of a beautiful rug with individual squares for clearly identifiable squares for seating.   Upon entering I handed a colored Lego to each child for later groupwork and directed students to choose a square to sit on during our group activity time.  We began class by reading our objective " We will review expectations for library behavior and routines so we can spend more time learning ."  I used an activator to start our conversation, "What would you do if you had more time?"  ...