Finding good books & Halloween: Week of October 24-28

The theme this week was a continuation of how to find a good book, with some Halloween thrown in for fun.

Kindergarten:  I showed the Kindergarten classes the video for the book Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson, narrated by Danny Glover with music by George Winston.  It is a lovely book about the circle of life of a pumpkin, from seed to plant to fruit and back to seed again.  The music is lively and the video is engaging for all students.  The Kindergarten classes are going to the pumpkin patch on Monday, October 31, so this ties in with their curriculum.

1st grade:  Continuing the theme of how to find a good book, I read the 1st grade classes Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians by Jackie Mims Hopkins.  Goldie Socks finds herself in the bears' house while they are out doing their jobs as libearians, and she finds books that are too big, too hard, too easy, too little, until she finds some that are just right.  The book includes the Five Finger Rule, which I teach students to help them find a good book.  Choose a book and turn to the first page, read it to yourself or out loud and every time you come to a word you don't know, put up a finger.  At the end of the page if you have zero fingers or one finger up it may be too easy, but is still a fun book to check out; two or three fingers means it is just right and you'll be challenging yourself to be a better reader; four or five fingers mean it will be difficult to understand but it might be a good book to read with someone at home.

2nd grade:  We read Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians as well, and talked about choosing AR books that were in our zone as another way to find a "just right" book.

3rd grade:  We played the Order in the Library online games again, but instead of doing it as a whole class, we went into the computer lab and students practiced alphabetizing books individually.  I challenged students to get through at least two games before we finished in the lab and went to check out books.

4th grade:  I purchased some new fractured fairytales and folktales at the end of last year and I've been waiting to share Cinderella Skeleton with a class ever since.  It is a wonderful version of the story with appropriately creepy Tim Burton-like pictures, with Robert San Souci's well-written verse sharing the story of Cinderella Skeleton and her wish to go to the Halloween Ball, where she meets her Prince Charming and loses not her shoe, but her whole foot while running away.

5th grade:  We looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.

6th grade:  We also looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.