Celebrating the April Reading Challenge - 1

Governor Raimondo challenged every student in Rhode Island to read every single day during the month of April. Oak Lawn students rose to the challenge, sending in "shelfies" and building book forts and reading nooks as their library assignments.

What Ms. Moore Has Been Reading - T2

Here are some of the most recent books I've read and recommend for my students. Cover images and descriptions are from Goodreads. 

Picture Books

Linus and his eraser, Ernie, don't always see eye to eye. But with the family art show drawing near, these two will have to sharpen their collaboration to make something neither one could do on their own! (NOTE: I added this to our Mock Caldecott list.)

Down home is Granny’s house. Down home is where Lil Alan and his parents and sister will join great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Down home is where Lil Alan will hear stories of the ancestors and visit the land that has meant so much to all of them. And down home is where all of the children will find their special way to pay tribute to family history. All the kids have to decide on what tribute to share, but what will Lil Alan do? (NOTE: This won an official Caldecott Honor.)

Ginny Goblin has one simple rule to follow: She is not allowed to open this box. Not until dinnertime.   But Ginny Goblin doesn't like to follow the rules, so nothing will stop her from trying to open this box. Not a tall tower, not a misty mountain, not a frightful forest, and certainly not a murky moat filled with scaly, scary serpents . . .   But wait! What is in the box? You'll have to open this book to find out! (Don't worry, you're allowed.)

The Copley County Animal Shelter has an aardvark, a lizard, a goose, a weasel, and plenty more. But do they have a puppy? The girl with her wagon is ready to adopt a dog—not an aardvark, lizard, or goose! Can the shelter manager help her to find her perfect pet?

All Jamie wants is to spend some time alone at the beach and finish her art project in the sand. But everyone around keeps asking her pesky questions she doesn't know how to answer: what are you making? Aren't you clever?

Jamie does her best to tune it all out and focus on her creation . . . until she finds a like-minded friend. (NOTE: I added this to our Mock Caldecott list.)

Starting kindergarten is a big milestone--and the hero of this story is ready to make his mark! He's dressed himself, eaten a pile of pancakes, and can't wait to be part of a whole new kingdom of kids. The day will be jam-packed, but he's up to the challenge, taking new experiences in stride with his infectious enthusiasm! And afterward, he can't wait to tell his proud parents all about his achievements--and then wake up to start another day

Follow a sad little fact who is locked away for telling the truth. In its underground prison, it meets other facts, all hidden away because they could not lie. Finally, with the help of a few skillful fact-finders, the facts are able to spread truth- something that ultimately can't be denied.
Though some people continue to ignore them, the facts are out in the world ready for anyone who wants to hear, because "a fact is a fact," and that's that.

Middle School Fiction

Cimorene is everything a princess is not supposed to be: headstrong, tomboyish, smart - and bored. So bored that she runs away to live with a dragon - and finds the family and excitement she's been looking for.

12-year-old Nova eagerly awaits the launch of the space shuttle Challenger--it's the first time a teacher is going into space, and kids across America will watch the event on live TV in their classrooms. Nova and her big sister, Bridget, share a love of astronomy and the space program, and planned to watch the launch together. But Bridget has disappeared, and Nova is in a new foster home.

Frank’s dad was a champion hot-rod racer, Gilbert the Great. But when a terrible accident sees him go from hero to zero, Frank and Gilbert are left with nothing—and in the grips of a wicked crime boss and his henchmen. After Gilbert is thrown in prison, only Frank can come to his rescue. . .

Nonfiction

An innovative look back through time, Manhattan Maps follows the history of Manhattan Island from its natural formation to the bustling city today. Jen Thermes highlights watershed moments where nature demanded action of New Yorkers--the Great Fire of 1835, the Great Blizzard of 1888, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. In special sidebars, she closely traces specific threads of history and their lasting impact today. An epic volume that chronicles the rise of Manhattan through the lenses of geography, city planning, sociology, historiography, and more.

Every colorful page contains a thoughtfully designed set of four shapes. Each of the shapes can be a correct answer to the question “Which one doesn’t belong?” Because all their answers are right answers, students naturally shift their focus to justifications and arguments based on the shapes’ geometric properties. (NOTE: I will be adding to my 1st-grade sorting lesson unit.)

From attending the Firefighter Academy to training with a team, there are many things you have to accomplish before becoming a firefighter! Learn the tools firefighters use, the kinds of trucks firefighters drive, and the dangerous situations they find themselves in as they put their lives on the line to help others in this charming picture book.

(NOTE: No description on Goodreads, but if you want to learn how to draw comics, this is pretty good.)

What Ms. Moore Read in November

Here are some of the most recent books I've read and recommend for my students. They're all available from the public library, but any donations towards getting them into our collection are most welcome! Cover images and descriptions are from Goodreads. 

Picture Books

In this heartfelt and universal story, a mother and daughter look forward to their special Saturday routine together every single week. But this Saturday, one thing after another goes wrong–ruining storytime, salon time, picnic time, and the puppet show they’d been looking forward to going to all week. Mom is nearing a meltdown…until her loving daughter reminds her that being together is the most important thing of all.

When the tsunami destroyed Makio's village, Makio lost his father . . . and his voice. The entire village is silenced by grief, and the young child's anger at the ocean grows. Then one day his neighbor, Mr. Hirota, begins a mysterious project--building a phone booth in his garden. At first Makio is puzzled; the phone isn't connected to anything. It just sits there, unable to ring. But as more and more villagers are drawn to the phone booth, its purpose becomes clear to Makio: the disconnected phone is connecting people to their lost loved ones. 

Once there was a river flowing through a forest. The river didn't know it was capable of adventures until a big bear came along. But adventures aren't any fun by yourself, and so enters Froggy, Turtles, Beaver, Racoons, and Duck. These very different animals take off downstream, but they didn't know they needed one another until thankfully, the river came along.






A girl named Harriet longs to play her cello alone in her room. But when a noisy owl disrupts her solitude, Harriet throws her teacup out the window and accidentally knocks the moon out of the sky in frustration. Over the course of an evening, Harriet and the moon become fast friends. Worried that he'll catch a chill, Harriet buys the moon a soft woolen hat, then takes him on a boat ride across a glistening lake, something he's only dreamed of. But can she work up the courage to play her music for the moon?

Pip is a normal pig who does normal stuff: cooking, painting, and dreaming of what she’ll be when she grows up. But one day a new pig comes to school and starts pointing out all the ways in which Pip is different. Suddenly she doesn’t like any of the same things she used to . . . the things that made her Pip.

Middle Grade Fiction

Times are tough. Jobs are scarce and miracles are in short supply. But something strange is happening in If Only, Ohio. An old well has suddenly, impossibly, begun to grant wishes. And three sixth graders are the only ones who know why. Ernest Wilmette believes a good deed makes magic happen. Ryan Hardy thinks they should just mind their own business. Lizzy MacComber believes in facts, not fairy tales. Of course, you don't have to believe in wishes to make one. As more wishes are made, the well's true secret gets harder and harder to keep. 

Rion Kwirk comes from a rather odd family. But no one in the family is more odd than Rion’s grandfather, Papa Kwirk. He’s the kind of guy who shows up on his motorcycle only on holidays, handing out crossbows and stuffed squirrels as presents. Rion has always been fascinated by Papa Kwirk, especially since his son—Rion’s father—is the complete opposite. Which is why, when Rion and his family learn of Papa Kwirk’s death and pile into the car to attend his funeral and pay their respects, Rion can’t help but feel that that’s not the end of his story. He doesn’t know how right he is.

Patricia “Sweet Pea” DiMarco wasn’t sure what to expect when her parents announced they were getting a divorce. She never could have imagined that they would have the “brilliant” idea of living in nearly identical houses on the same street. In the one house between them lives their eccentric neighbor Miss Flora Mae, the famed local advice columnist behind “Miss Flora Mae I?”

Dividing her time between two homes is not easy. And it doesn’t help that at school, Sweet Pea is now sitting right next to her ex–best friend, Kiera, a daily reminder of the friendship that once was. Things might be unbearable if Sweet Pea didn’t have Oscar—her new best friend—and her fifteen-pound cat, Cheese.

Then one day Flora leaves for a trip and asks Sweet Pea to forward her the letters for the column. And Sweet Pea happens to recognize the handwriting on one of the envelopes. What she decides to do with that letter sets off a chain of events that will forever change the lives of Sweet Pea DiMarco, her family, and many of the readers of “Miss Flora Mae I?”

Pictures for the Book with No Pictures

Working on the difference between authors and illustrators in K. We read "The Book with No Pictures" by B.J. Novak and the kids drew their own illustrations for some key terms.

Sorting Books with Grade 1

Part of our grade 1 focus in library is sorting and categories. As an introduction to how the library is arranged, I gave groups of first graders a pile of books and asked them to sort them into two categories. They came up with so many different ways to arrange the piles, I was impressed, including:

• softcover v. hardcover
• big v. little
• chapter books v. picture books
• animals on the cover v. people
• fiction v. nonfiction (which is the focus of our next lesson!)
  

Grade 4 Dewey Detectives

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. If you are not a fourth grader and think you have cracked the code, put your answers in the comments!

• 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
• 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
• 900s: maps, ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers

The next week, using what they knew about the categories, each group had to assign a stack of topic cards to the correct "hundreds." The students in both classes did a great job; even if they had something in the wrong place (like dinosaurs in the 900s), they were able to explain their reasoning (dinosaurs lived a long time ago, in ancient history). I love that they were using their brains!