Lewis and Clark Learns

Each year the members of our Page Turner's book club adopt a shelf to take care of throughout the year.  The kids pick a shelf and we take a "shelfie" and post their photo on the shelf they claimed.  This group REALLY helps keep the shelves organized and looking good.  Plus each student gets to highlight the books from their shelf.  Here are a few of our "shelfies".

Thanks to ideas from fellow librarians Terri Daly and Kitchell Schneider my kindergartners have been reading all the Missouri Building Block Nominees and learning through literature.  Below are a few examples of what we have been up to... More number correspondence with Frog On A Log  After reading Dragon Was Terrible , we built castles using a variety of building materials from our MakerSpace. Good Books!  Good Times!

Read A Great Book.  Build To Learn.  That is what we do at the beginning of the year in Kindergarten.  This week we read, Ten Little Ninjas by Miranda Paul.  It is a cute counting & rhyming book that found us counting up to 10 and back down again. We then used legos as a quick counting 1-to-1 correspondence practice before checking out new books.

My readers are SO excited to have the opportunity to make a real impact on next year's Mark Twain Nominee list.  Just a few weeks into the year, and I have more than 15 readers who have already finished this year's list!  As a result, they are starting to read next year's preliminary list of books and rating them so their opinions can help decide on the final 2018-2019 Mark Twain list!  What a great experience for our passionate and ravenous LC readers.  Anyone who finishes the list has the same opportunity until December of 2017! Good Books!  Good Times!

We ARE a school of readers!  

Last year, I started most library sessions with a book talk, book trailer, book chat, or series highlight as a way to share the love of reading and recommend good books to our readers at LC.  I was thrilled with the enthusiasm around reading as a result of sharing books with one another. While we viewed some really quality book trailers, I realized I wanted to give my kids a chance to show their creativity and their love of books by producing their very own movie trailers to share with our school community through various avenues. So, over the summer I set about making plans for the beginning of the year.  As usual, I jumped in with both feet and fell in over my head:) but that is how I roll and get things done!  At Lewis and Clark there are 200 kids creating videos!  Some decided to work alone and others in small groups. To begin, we viewed A LOT of trailers and wrote down our noticings, good and bad!  From there we selected books and began creating a pla...

So, I am beginning my 30th year of teaching!  I simply can't fathom that I have been teaching for that long or that I still love it as much as I did the very first year.  I love that each year is a fresh new beginning.  Here are a few pics showing what is new in the LC library this year... Our theme for our Missouri reading award programs is Reading is My SuperPower!  Love these sunglasses that add a bit of pizzazz to our pictures. We added several new titles to our collection of book sets for our Build A Book Club section. After reading a GKCRead or Mark Twain Nominee, our readers have the opportunity to rate the books in order to help others decide if they should read it.   Our annual survey stated that LC students wanted more comfy seating.  Picked up these guys from IKEA.  The kiddos were pretty thrilled to see them. Found this table on the side of the road.  Picked it up, primed it, painted it black, ...

For the second year, I offered a weeklong summer MakerCamp for 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade makers. We tinkered, built with cardboard, designed video games (three of our makers also sat down and taught Ryne Dittmer, a writer for our local paper how to design a video game using Bloxels for an article he is writing), we gave feedback, failed and fixed, made new friends, tried new things, learned the art of green screen, made Non-Newtonian fluid (slime), learned all about polymer clay, built marble runs and tracks, spent a lot of time on choice projects, and at the end of the week we  presented our learning to parents and siblings at a mini MakerFaire . It was a great week of making! Special thanks to my new principal, Mitch Hiser for stopping in each day of camp to sit and chat with the kids about themselves and their projects.  Also, thanks to Mr. Hiser and Mrs. Ferguson, our assistant principal for taking time out of their Friday to attend our mini MakerFaire. Check out ou...