Kindergarten Bilingual Story time

Our Spanish-speaking kindergarten students have been lucky to participate in a weekly bilingual storytime this semester. As part of their service learning requirement at Duke, four undergraduates planned and delivered a bilingual storytime every Monday morning. The students were exposed to familiar titles and authors while interacting with facilitators in Spanish! Hands-on activities followed each story and the students loved it! I am so grateful to our Duke volunteers for donating their time and energy. The pictures below are from our last storytime together. At the end of class, each student selected a bundle of books to keep with the promise that they would read them with their families!

Reading one of the Pigeon books by Mo Willems--a favorite!

Playing a game on Mo Willems' website: Pigeon Presents

Students were so excited to pick out books!

Which one should I choose?

We love books :)

Book Fair!

Thanks to all the volunteers and families that came out to support our spring Book Fair! It was an amazing success!! The Club Blvd. community raised almost $4,000 for the Media Center. We will be able to buy a huge number of books for the Media Center and classrooms with this money. Thank you for generously supporting our readers :)

Students earned a chance to win a gift certificate by guessing the answer to this question. Each day they were given a new clue on the announcements to help them narrow down the number. What is your guess??

One of our lucky winners! :)

Multicultural Night

Multicultural Night was celebrated last Thursday evening at Club Blvd. with music, dancing, art, food, and learning about cultures all over the world. I look forward to it every year as a way to honor all the cultures and families represented in our school community!

As our contribution to the evening, Señora Moehlmann (Spanish teacher) and I collaborated to plan a Country Cube research project for Mrs. Hayes’ 4^th grade class. Each pair of students randomly drew the name of a Spanish-speaking country of the Caribbean or South America. The students then used Culture Grams, an online database available through the Durham County Library, to complete their research and find pictures. Using Culture Grams gave the students an opportunity to explore a new database, practice skimming content for important facts, and examine helpful text features. 

The students had to work with their partners to find 2-3 facts for each topic, cite their resource,  and then create PowerPoint slides to glue on their cubes. The topics selected were: food; holidays; language; life as a child/school; and free choice. The students were motivated to learn about a new Spanish-speaking country and excited to share their information with the school. The class had to remain focused to complete their Culture Grams research, PowerPoint slides, and cube construction in just 5 short days!

Selecting a country

Conducting research using Culture Grams

Typing the PowerPoints

Our display board for Multicultural Night

Senora Moehlmann with a 4th grader and a few cubes

Screen shot of Culture Grams

Destiny MyQuest

2nd graders have been learning how to use technology as a means to interact with each other about what they are reading. The program is called MyQuest and is located on the Destiny Media Catalog. MyQuest provides a fun, safe venue for young readers to communicate with each other in the following ways: create a virtual bookshelf; write book reviews; put books on hold; and make recommendations to friends. Students build their virtual book shelves as a way to keep track of their growth as readers. They connect with friends by recommending books and also by commenting on what their friends are reading.

As a community of readers it is important for students to interact with one another to grow and learn. They have many opportunities to interact face to face at school. MyQuest provides one more avenue for social interaction that draws upon critical 21st century learning skills. Students may access their account from home, school, or anywhere they have internet access.

Wax Museum

Third graders have been busy this week preparing for their Wax Museum projects. In this exciting project students select a "change-maker" in our world (past or present) and research this person in order to learn about his/her life and act as that person at the Wax Museum.
Students visited the Media Center to learn about biographies and what characteristics make a book a biography. Each group received a different biography to explore and had to write down what they noticed. Below are samples from 2 group's notes:

As each group shared their observations, we noticed that biographies have many things in common:

• table of contents
• timeline
• real photographs or drawings
• glossary
• author's note
• index
• chapters or sections organized chronologically

We also brainstormed all the words that popped in our heads when we heard the word "biography." You can see the common suggested words in our Wordle below. We thought it was really cool that the words "Biography, Person, Change-Maker, and Learning" showed up the most often :) Those words must be pretty important to our research!



(mouse over the Wordle to enlarge it)

On day two we learned about 3 quality resources available in the Online Fun! section of the Media Center website: NC WiseOwl; PebbleGo; and Webpath Express. These websites have kid-friendly and reliable information on a variety of levels. We also learned that research might be frustrating at times because we have to keep "searching" to find the answers we need. We will probably have to use multiple websites and books before our quest is complete!

Here are a few pictures from Ms. Whaley's class visit to the Media Center today:

We learned the Dewey number for biographies is 921

Listening to an article on the PebbleGo database

Exploring NCWiseOwl

We learned that it will be necessary to use a variety of resources

Working hard on Part 1 of our research

Excited about my choice!

Black History Month Living Museum

Club Boulevard culminated our Black History Month studies last week with a luncheon and evening showcase. At the luncheon, a group of young actors participated in our Living Museum. These students each researched a notable African American and acted as that person to share important facts about his/her life. We were visited by Octavia Butler, Dr. John R. Cooper, Ruby Bridges, Garrett Morgan, and Ashley Bryan...just to name a few! I am so proud of our Kindergarten-5th graders who made history come to life for students, teachers, and families!

Sound Off!

Mrs. Murray's 2nd graders learned how to use Glogster to create online posters about their Sound unit. Partners had to collaborate to create a layout, type, and organize their information. Check back later for an updated post with our finished Glogs!