Listen. Connect. Empower.

We read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and identified what a community was during our last library block.  Now it was time to identify challenges in our own community and create a plan for changes. We began with a brainstorm of challenges in our community.  For some classes this was too big of a question and they did better with "challenges in our school."  I collected ideas on a padlet . Screenshot of our brainstorming Ideas fell into several categories and highlights included: Challenges in our school  Our playground is vandalized by older students Students don't follow the rules Students don't treat each other respectfully Bullying Challenges in our town Litter (this came up over and over) Some people don't have jobs or money Car accidents/bad drivers/poor road conditions Rail Trail - is this good for our town or not? Challenges in my personal life (concerns that directly effect students or cause them to worry) Money Ca...

Our community is reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind  by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer as a One Book, One Community read. I was especially excited this year because the different formats enable my elementary school students to participate this year. We had been challenging ourselves to " Read Without Walls " so I introduced this book as a true story about someone who "thought without walls" and challenged himself to solve problems in his community.  We began by identifying different kinds of "communities" we might belong to: Ultimately we defined community as "A group of people that all participate, work together, do the same thing, and believe the same thing." We read the book together, pausing periodically to listen for the challenges in William's community. Challenges we identified included: No lights No rain No water No food No money No school With a working knowledge of what a "community" i...

A team of teachers and I felt that we needed to spread a little kindness throughout our school. We planned school-wide activities and a team of students helped me bring kindness to our library as well. Students helpers traced their hands and cut out hands for our bulletin board: Students helped to create a "kindness tree" inspired by a volunteer. They painted the branches: In class, students were encouraged to hang the names of characters that are kind or books that show kindness: We celebrated as a school. We began by assembling as a school and reading Students were then encouraged to write down the kind deeds they saw. These were collected by Student Council members and were put in a giant "bucket." We pulled acts of kindness out of the bucket and shared these with the school throughout the week. Later in the week we assembled again and read We assembled a chain of compliments. Every student wrote a complime...

Our wonderful independent bookstore, The Blue Bunny sends authors to our school periodically.  We recently were treated to a fabulous visit by Lisa Yee .  Lisa Yee knows how to talk to her audience, and she connected with 3rd-5th grade students and teachers alike.  We laughed, learned, and left a little more confident in ourselves after hearing her stories of childhood and how she became an author. Most importantly (to our students), Lisa Yee brought Peepy along for the ride and Peepy took a selfie with our lucky students (photo courtesy of Lisa Yee): She shared with us her writing and revisions - on paper and electronically. She shared secrets to her Super Hero High books and research.  Best of all, she demonstrated with her fabulous sword. In preparation for her visit I had students go to her wonderful website and investigate a number of ideas: A book that Lisa Yee wrote that I have read or would like to read is: A favorite book of Lisa Ye...

Reading Aloud Once again this year I signed my students up to connect with others around the country in celebration of World Read Aloud Day.  I enjoy connecting with friends old and new as we share books with one another.  I especially enjoy when we have a few minutes at the end of a visit to share favorite books.   Try as I might, I could not find a class to connect with a 3rd grade group of mine, so I turned to my high school colleague, Alice Johnson for help.  She in turn connected with the High School National Honor Society advisor and recruited a lovely, young lady to come join us for our celebration.  We had anticipated a group of students, but 3 snow days hampered our grand plans.  Still, we had a fabulous visit with our High School Librarian, Alice Johnson and a member of the High School Honor Society. I chose three selections from You Read To Me, I'll Read To You by Mary Ann Hoberman.  I divided the class into three group...