The Little Orange House- A story to cut & tell

Storytelling is a lot of fun, but when a child tells a story, there are important skills being developed, such as sequencing, oral expression, fluency, memory, and vocabulary. Additionally, sharing stories grows confidence and builds relationships. I try to offer many varied opportunities for students to tell stories in the library. I learned the story of the Little Orange House when I was young, and have retold it many times over the years, to the delight and surprise of the kids. They practice telling the story to each other, and then (with any luck) they will retell the story enough times outside of school to make the story their own. I made the template below so that my littlest students can get a little help from their grown-ups. Even kindergartners can tell this story if they get started cutting on the folded end of the paper! To download a template, click HERE. You will notice that the instructions are printed upside down, this is an effort to get folks to cut UP from the FOLD.

Putting Tired, Old Words To Rest

4th graders used the thesaurus to look up overused words, then they created custom gravestones online. The gravestones all indicate what words replaced the "dead" word. The kids really enjoyed this, and it would be a nice little mini-research activity for famous people of the past as well (Date of birth, death, significant achievements) Tombstone generators: http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/ http://www.futuregravestone.com/index.php (more ads here) I tried to put all the gravestones together into a slideshow, but almost every slideshow tool is now BLOCKED by our filtering software. This Animoto version will have to suffice!

Kindergarten Writing Folders

I have two little groups of Kindergarteners who visit me for half an hour each. I am supposed to be offering enrichment activities. I've been having them practice their writing. The invented spelling they use is so adorable. For inspiration on best practices, Ive been using Marvelous MiniLessons for Teaching Beginning Writing, k-3 (Rog) I wanted an idea board inside each child's folder, so I made the one you see above.

SUMDOG

One of my techie friends at a local school challenged us in a mathematical contest using SUMDOG. I'd registered a while ago, but hadn't loaded my students until now. Today I introduced it to a class of 2nd graders and a class of 5th graders and they loved it! Several of the kids wrote down their log-in information so they can play at home. It was the perfect activity for the kids today because it's only a 3-day week, and I didn't want to start any new grade-level projects, since I won't see the other classes this week. Kids log in and play a series of math games against other players who are logged in at the time, or a "robot". They earn coins depending on how accurate they are. I can choose how hard the problems are, or even dictate a specific type of problems (coin values, for example)

Halloween slide show

I know it seems simple, but many skills were at work when the 2nd graders created this Halloween movie for you. Logging in, opening a program as directed, using toolbars, using the keyboard, and phonetic awareness (The invented spelling is part of the charm!) This is a fun project to share with parents.

Digital Citizenship Projects

The fourth & fifth graders have been learning about the school Acceptable Use Policy, and digital citizenship in general. To share their learning, the students did a couple fun things... 4th Graders shared ideas on a digital bulletin board, created with Linoit. I really like this tool, because it allows all the kids to express their ideas to the group, also, they strive to think of information that hasn't yet been shared, so they are really racking their brains. Linoit is easy to use, but I wish our school didn't block access to Padlet, which is an even nicer tool!

5th graders each made a Voki to tell about a computer rule. They LOVED using Voki, and were very pleased to have their creations shared on the school web page. This was a very engaging approach to teaching this material. Here's an example:

Kindergarten Computer Skills

The Kindergartners LOVE to use the computers. I have a number of sites that I direct them to from my webpage, but I mostly like to teach them creative skills. I start the year by reading Lunch, by Denise Fleming.

This is a fun, simple and quick story about a little mouse who makes a colorful mess. I then show them how to make a "Mouse Mess" of their own using TuxPaint on the computer. I encourage them to use a lot of different colors and brush styles, jsut to practice using the mouse. For many of them, thisis their first experience using a computer.

I give them each a little paper mouse to take home... a computer mouse on one side, and a storybook mouse on the other. The dots you see represent the stickers I place on the Left Click side of the mouse, so the kids know where to rest their index finger.

A pdf of the mouse pattern can be found HERE.