We all know how passionate Chef Massimo is about great, freshly prepared Southern Italian food but today, the students were treated to brain food from Chef! To help the 4th grade prepare for International Day on December 5th, he gave a lively, informative presentation about the traditions, iconic structures, and the geography of Italy. The students hung onto his every word as they prepared themselves to show off their knowledge of Italy in two weeks. Chef is from Puglia, Italy and he used a map to show the students the different regions of his native country. Thank you very much for sharing your time with the 4th grade today! We look forward to cooking with you on Dec. 6th during the cooking segment of International night!
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While I was at the national school library conference last week, I was at an author panel discussion and this is where I discovered Laurel Snyder, the very lively author! When I was on the plane coming home, I realized that this wonderful lady is now living in Atlanta! I was so excited I had to write to her. This author, who is so generous with her time agreed to "stop by" on Skype to visit with our Kindergartners today!!! The students loved meeting Ms Laurel! She is entertaining and she introduced us to her cat and dog. Her dog does magic tricks with his ears!!!! Ms Laurel also showed us how she is doing paintings to try and figure out who her characters will be in her next book. They were wonderful drawings and we thought her art work was stupendous!!! We want to thank Ms Laurel for spending part of her day with us and we can't wait to see her again! This is a sample of how the app, Tellagami works. It is a thirty second video message creation program. You can add your own background and design your avatar. The arms move automatically! The possibilities for this app are endless!
Feriel Feldman, retired theater teacher and Past President of the Southern Order of Storytellers came to Hawthorne ES to share the art of storytelling with all of our students. She crafted an anti-bullying theme through her telling of two Halloween stories: “The Ugly Pumpkin”, by Daniel Horowitz and the Jewish Folktale, 29 Witches. Storytelling is as much about the audience as it is about the storyteller. The Hawthorne students eagerly participated. They followed the teller’s lead and did not miss a beat while focusing on her every word and responded accordingly. Feldman was enthusiastically received by all of the K-5 students, staff, and faculty! According to Feldman, there is much research showing that the human brain is wired for stories and also, that the ability to tell stories enhances a child’s ability to learn and develop. To learn more about the upcoming storytelling festival in January which includes a whole day of activities for children, log onto the Southern Order of Storytelling website http://southernorderofstorytellers.org/. We want to thank our Teacher Support Specialist Diane Robinson for connecting us with Feriel Feldman and we want to thank Ms Feldman for taking the time out of her busy schedule to share her stories with the hornets! Students- Join Quest 2 Matter! On Friday, one of our HES Students came up to me and said "Ms Levine, I want to change the world." This of course was music to my ears! I advised her to find something that really mattered to her but she already had identified her cause...Way to go! So next I would like to share the Quest2Matter site with her family and all of the families at my school so that the children can begin to create, organize, and document their Quests to change the world! Way to go Sammy! [pseudonym] This post's for you!!! I am so proud of you! How to Take Action! Use the widget (search box) below to look up information on your research topics. What types of sources do you get in your results list? Share your findings with Ms Levine! The lower grades are studying Math Fables Too: Making Science Count. by Gregory Tang. This book illustrates, through the use of rhyme and cool animal facts, different ways to solve addition problems to ten. While this book does an excellent job with grouping combinations of numbers, it is even more outstanding with its information about animals and the vocabulary it exposes the kiddos too. The sophisticated science vocabulary and concepts make this a 5th grade reading level book (5.1) but perfect for a read aloud for young kids. This is a good example of a lower grades interest level (LG) with high reading level. We want young kids to be reading books with appropriate themes and concepts, even when they are advanced readers. To help the HES students stay organized when trying to conduct research, I have organized these high quality shortcuts, known as tiles in a "Symbaloo Webmix." The students in grades 3-5 are familiar with this webmix format and its content. Happy Searching!! Lower Grades Learn About the Library from the Shelf-ElfJackie Mims Hopkins http://www.jackiemimshopkins.com/ writes really fun books about libraries. In the book The Shelf Elf, the students learn how to use shelf markers and all sorts of cool library manners... in the Shelf Elf Helps Out, they learn about different "library neighborhoods" and why books are grouped together by category. This very introductory lesson helps the students know that there is a method to where the books are placed on the shelves and the importance of keeping the books in their correct "neighborhood" so they do not get lost.
Over the past two weeks, grades 3-5 have been looking closely at the amazing research resources that are available. Here is a brief lineup of what we studied:
Reliable Search Engines:
Welcome Back!This week our lower grade classes are reading Librarian on the Roof! This is a true story about a passionate librarian in a town in Texas who was dismayed to show up to her new job to find no up to date books for the children to read. She challenged the town to pitch in and donate money to the library by getting up on top of the library rooftop and staying there for several days through some very hazardous weather. I feel a connection to this book since I too try to find money to update the books in the library. Who knows, maybe this school year I will get up on the roof too! http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-voice-mg-king-on-librarian-on-roof.html On May 15th, mom Klara headed to Kenya with her two children, Adam and Ariana for a trip to Kenya to visit her family. I had just recently connected via Skype with Livingstone Kegode, a teacher at the Cheery School. I thought it would be a great opportunity for our students to carry some books to them! Our PTA donated some of the books and I purchased the rest of the books from the book fair that was at the school on May 15th! Today was the big day! Klara and the kids made it to the Cheery School to meet Livingstone and the students in person! More to come! Here is a link to the Cheery Centre!
Merkle/Murphey Family: Funds4Book Top Supporters!
The Funds4Books Birthday Book Campaign was a huge success. The donations received allowed us to purchase 150 new books. I want to thank the following people who many do not know contributed to the Hawthorne library fundraising effort: two of my New York friends Elaine Lavine and Gary Kaufman, my Kansas friend and world famous Ed Tech leader, Kevin Honeycutt, and my local Ameriprise Financial Advisor Mark Byrnside in addition to a donation made by me, Ms Levine, the school librarian. In total $1910.00 was raised and the Mackin book company generously donated $100.00 to our account to bring our spending power up to $2010. I am very touched by all of the families that were able to participate in this enormously important giving program. Every donation makes a big difference. Your donation might help us purchase a book that changes the life of a child!!! With that being said, I also want to recognize the families that were able to show extra support to this fundraiser and whose combined donations accounted for 30% of the total amount of funds raised: Fourmy, Mooney, Murphey, Smith, and Weiss. And thank you to Angela Maki for helping to get the word out!!!! Also,thank you to Elizabeth Washburn and her daughter Madeline for creating the Funds4Books bulletin board and for preparing the thank you gifts generously donated by the PTA. Also, thank you to the PTA for purchasing the Honor book plates to go inside the books of our honorees. Oh, and let’s not forget... I had a lot of help making our recent Funds4Books celebration a success: Thank you to Ms.Eden Clark for coming to our party and not complaining about being put to work, Ms Kellaway for showing up at the party and teaching the kids some great dance moves, and most importantly to Elizabeth Blass, the kids Rule The School Librarian for the day who made everything happen and who kept everything moving! I am so proud of you Elizabeth and I cannot thank you enough for all that you did. Thank you for giving so much of yourself to this event. Due to CRCT testing, not all classes have been able to come to the library but for those who have, I have been playing with my new IPAD mini and showing the kiddos some of my favorite apps! The first app is called My Sketch and is currently $1.99. It is also available in the Google Play store for Androids! Here is IOS link for Apple devices: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-sketch/id448162988?mt=8 As you can see takes a photo and makes it look like a pencil drawing! It works great for animal portraits!!! The next app we looked at is ToonCamera. This app applies a cartoonish filter to photos and videos and it's lots of fun but you have to play around with it a bit to figure out what effects you like. This is now .99 in the App store. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tooncamera/id392538848?mt=8 Finally, we had the most fun with Puppet Pals and Puppet Pals 2. I had been testing Puppet Pals All Access Pass (the paid version) and the kids were having a ball as I demonstrated the creation of very silly scenes with characters bouncing up and down and getting bigger and smaller. Then somehow I stumbled upon Puppet Pals 2 which has characters with moving limbs, a moving mouth, interchangeable heads and bodies etc. There is even a way to insert your own head into the funky equation! I was completely unfamiliar with Puppet Pals 2 but I really wanted to check it out so I opened it in Ms Sheffield's 4th grade class visit. Then I had the idea of calling on a student to create a movie. What a novel idea, HA! I called Nicholas up to the front and told him he could choose one friend so Andrew joined him. I said "You have two minutes, make a movie!" We all had so much fun watching the two guys figure out the program and we were all very entertained by their hilarious movie! I wanted to get a picture of them with their movie characters in the background but one student got onto the IPAD started changing things around so you really cannot see the scene they created but it was all in fun! Oh and Ian jumped into the shot so that's why there are three boys up there!!! Here is a review of Puppet Pals 2 http://www.geekswithjuniors.com/blog/2013/2/19/puppet-pals-2.html. Here is the link to the app store, this is $4.99 for the full version (All Access)https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puppet-pals-2-all-access/id557616416?mt=8 Dr. Sarah Prineas, middle grades fantasy author and former English professor was kind enough to visit with a group of our students today for career day via Skype. Prineas was very engaging and dynamic; she was able to capture the hearts and minds of our students with a really nice down to earth talk about her books from the Magic Thief series. Our hungry readers where treated to many details relating to plot, setting, and character development. This author had a very relaxed presence and great rhythm as she moved from booktalk to factoids to writing tips to a tour of her workspace to an introduction of her canine companion. She was gracious enough to answer all of the questions posed by our own young authors in very thorough and thoughtful manner. Tbis Skype visit was a real highlight for the staff and students and we we are very, very grateful to this outstanding author for donating her time. Thank you Sarah Prineas!!! http://sarah-prineas.com/2012/09/free-skype-visits/ |
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May 2015
AuthorSue Levine is a Teacher-Librarian in Atlanta, GA. Categories |