Friday, October 31, 2014

Thanks for our best book fair yet!

Wow!  New London Intermediate Middle School you have risen to the challenge once again!  We are awed by your support and generosity. This was our most successful book fair ever!  We not only exceeded our sales goal, but we also collected the most All for Books donations EVER!  This year through our All for Books classroom competition, you donated $837.05 to our school library.  This money was not only used to purchase additional books for our school library, but Scholastic is also matching the amount that we collected and donating that money to schools in need.  We are so lucky to have such generous students at our school.  Here is a peek at what we were able to add to our library with your All for Books donations and our book fair sales profit.



A special thank you goes out to the following classrooms that collected the most money during our All for Books competition.  The top three classrooms earned a doughnut party, and the remaining classrooms received some special Halloween treats.  
     Mrs. Keach's class- $152.40
     Mr. Shepard's class- $138.78
     Mrs. Yeager's class- $124.17
     Mrs. Friemark's class- $104.23
     Mrs. Casey's class- $77.19
     Mrs. Smith's class- $72.17
     Mrs. Wilson's class- $70.76

Once again, we appreciate all of your support!  We look forward to seeing you in the library to check out all of our great new books.
     

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Go back in time to the prehistoric days with our 7th grade tour guides!


Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go back in time and live during the age of the dinosaurs or Earth's first species?  Our 7th grade tour guides can help you have this experience.  After learning about several prehistoric eras, Mrs. Winton's Science classes used Adobe Voice on the iPads to create a virtual tour of these eras.  Learn from them what you would need to survive during this time.  What life existed then?  What would you need to bring with you to safely survive your journey?  View their tours below to find out.

Molly and Sage's tour of the Paleozoic Era
Maddie and Sydney's tour of the Cenozoic Era
Paloma and Faith's tour of the Mesozoic Era
Kaden and Liam's tour of the Cenozoic Era

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

We are digital citizens!

I cannot believe that the end of the first quarter is almost here!  Students in Integrated Technology have spent the quarter learning about digital citizenship.  Lessons have included everything from Internet safety to cyberbullying to website evaluation.  As a culminating activity, students designed their own project to showcase what they have learned about digital citizenship.  Students used a variety of tools to share their knowledge including Go Animate to create animated videos, Google Sites to create websites, Bitstrips to create online comics, Adobe Voice to create a digital story, and iMovie to edit their own live videos.  Here is a sampling of products from our new digital citizenship experts.

Ally and Hayley's website



 



Friday, October 17, 2014

Explorer App Smash with Photo Mapo, Pic Collage, and Thinglink

After learning about explorers in Social Studies, Mr. Wegner's 5th graders were excited to show everyone what they know.  Mr. Wegner and I developed a fun project that allowed students to share their knowledge and gave them a chance to play around with smashing the apps Photo Mapo, Pic Collage, and Thinglink.

First, students used the app Photo Mapo to create a map collage of the place that their assigned explorer discovered.  They also included some information about the route that the explorer took and the place of discovery.

Next, students used Image Quest to find copyright-free images that represented their explorers.  They then created a collage in the app Pic Collage.  They also added their image created in Photo Mapo to their Pic Collage, giving them the chance to see how easy it is to smash these two apps together.



Once the collage was complete, students uploaded this image to Thinglink to create an "interactive image."  In Thinglink, students were able to add "hotspots" to each image to highlight information that was important about the explorer.  Their hotspots included videos of themselves describing the explorer, links to relevant websites, other images, and text comments.


Here are some of the 5th graders' finished products.  They had a blast doing their first app smash!

Monday, October 13, 2014

Teen Read Week has officially begun!





Today marks day one of our Teen Read Week celebration.  We will be connecting Teen Read Week this year to our Scholastic Book fair and celebrate both special events at once!  Below you will find a complete list of our fun activities.  Participate throughout the week to win some great prizes.  Check out the bulletin board outside of the library to see if you can unmask the teachers hiding behind the knight masks.


Another one of our activities is to guess how many mints it takes to freshen a dragon's breath.  Find the bucket of mints and guessing sheets on the circulation desk.  Beware the dragon!


Here is a complete list of our Teen Read Week activities.  Remember the Scholastic Book Fair will start beginning Tuesday, October 21 at 4pm and run through Friday, October 31.  We look forward to seeing you in the library!

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Global Read Aloud Begins!

From October 6-November 14, students in Mrs. Pritchard's 5th grade class will be talking a lot about goldfish.  No, they are not doing any crazy science experiments or bringing in a class pet.  These students are just a few of the over 300,000 students worldwide taking part in The Global Read Aloud.  Mrs. Pritchard has chosen to read aloud The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm.  Today she officially began the read aloud.  Before starting, the class checked out the posts that have been added to Twitter using the hashtag #GRAGoldfish.  Students were able to view the predictions made by other classrooms and see some photos of how others are beginning the project.  We added our own predictions using Mrs. Young's Twitter handle @donnalynnyoung.  This activity created a lot of anticipation, and the students were anxious for the read aloud to start.

Next, it was time to jump right in and begin reading.  Students gathered around Mrs. Pritchard as she started. 


While Mrs. Pritchard read, students grabbed sticky notes and added what they wondered, felt, and thought about during the reading.


At the end of chapter two, when Mrs. Pritchard announced that she would stop there for the day, students BEGGED for just ONE MORE CHAPTER!  I think that this is definitely a sign that they are very excited about participating in this year's Global Read Aloud and can't wait for tomorrow to hear more!  We also cannot wait to hear the reactions from students at our partner school in Duxbury, MA, when we Skype with them soon.

You can follow @donnalynnyoung on Twitter to read our thoughts and watch our progress during this six-week project.