Hour of Code

Phew, thank goodness the electricity stayed on today despite the big storm.  Today was the day we participated in the Hour of Code during our Computer Lab time.  

The Hour of Code is a week-long event organized by Code.org, with the goal of exposing as many students as possible to coding. There are numerous coding tutorials on the Code.org website.  We picked the one featuring Angry Birds to experiment with today.  Here are links to other opportunities for elementary coders at Code.org.

If that's not enough coding for you, you can check out these other websites;

Made with Code

Bitsbox

Scratch

First Annual Thanksgiving Cardboard Construction Challenge

Wow!  I had read about classes, clubs and entire schools doing Global Cardboard Challenges, and I really wanted for our class to do one, but I honestly had no idea how it would really work out. When I looked at blogs to get advice, they mostly said the best thing to do was just to go for it, so we did!

The week before Thanksgiving, the class watched Caine's Arcade, a heart-warming video about a boy who builds an entire cardboard arcade one summer.  If you haven't seen the story of the boy who inspired the cardboard construction movement, it's definitely worth watching.

Then, the half-day Wednesday before the Thanksgiving break, students brought in lots of cardboard, lots of tape and one wonderful mom brought in all kinds of markers.  We had a nearly two hour block of time for the challenge.  The only rules were students could build alone or in groups of up to four people, students needed to be polite and kind, students needed to use their imaginations and they needed to have fun.

Here are the before photos:

Here are some photos from the event:

The morning was fantastic. Although it was pretty unstructured, the students quickly broke off into single person and multi-person groups.  They helped each other refine ideas - one of my favorites was when a race-car morphed into a pirate ship.  Another was when one student suggested to a friend that an egg carton section would make a perfect polar bear face (it did).  Students worked together to hold pieces in place for taping or adjusting.  Students negotiated different building groups almost seamlessly.  The ideas were flying around and for almost all of the time period, all of the students were building.  

This activity is a keeper for next year (without the styrofoam snow!)

Next 10 books in Mrs. Newman's 100 Book Challenge

I love car trips for reading!  I've decided to add quick notes to the books I read for my One Hundred Book Reading Challenge.  Here are the next ten.

The Princess Fables by Marc Clark – These short fables, handling modern day problems, like a child with the “I don’t wannas,” were originally written by the author to get his daughter to go to school in the morning.   

The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents MacBeth – This is a short (74 page) graphic novel in which the animals of the zoo come out of their cages at night to present Shakespeare’s MacBeth. Reading this rendering of Shakespeare for elementary readers made me want to re-read Shakespeare's original.

Heather, the Violet Fairy, by Daisy Meadows (Reading Level 2.9) – When I made our first class library book order, I realized I hadn’t included fairy books. Luckily, a parent donated the Rainbow Magic series in the same week.  In this, the last book of the series, Kirsty and Rachel have to find the last of the rainbow fairies to restore color to Fairyland.  Fairy lovers will root for Kirsty and Rachel and will be itching to add color not only to fairyland, but to the simple black and white illustrations.

Ida B by Katherine Hannigan (Reading Level 6.4)– Ida B is such a delightful, creative, energetic character.  I couldn’t help but root for her as she struggled to come to terms with a sick mother and having to go from home-schooling to a school that already failed her once. 

Squish - Brave New Pond (Reading Level 2.6)– This is the second graphic novel about Squish, an amoeba, who in this book explores how important it is to sit at the popular table. This might not be a book I would pick up for myself to read, but the first reluctant reader I handed it to took the book home at night to finish it.  That’s enough for me to consider ordering the whole series of Squish books.

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, by Chris Grabenstein (Reading Level 4.5) -  This is another book in the popular sub-genre of game books,  also represented by the Calder Game, by Blue Balliett (Reading Level 5.4) and the Gollywhopper Games, by Jody Feldman (Reading Level 3.9).  I can recommend all three of these books, Escape from Mr. Lemocello’s Library in part because it is set in a library my daughter would design if she won the lottery and because it is sprinkled with references to books many students (and parents) will have read.    A good read for library, book and game lovers of all ages.

Fig Pudding, by Ralph Fletcher (Reading Level 4.7) – Narrated by the eleven-year-old eldest son Cliff, this is a book full of memorable moments in a large family.  Many of the stories are simple in the way life really happens, providing a nice break from the adrenaline-packed fantasy and adventure stories that abound. The Abernathys  could be your neighbors and you’d like them.  There are chapters that will make you laugh and chapters that will make you cry.  Fig Pudding was a good read for over the Thanksgiving break.

Guts & Glory, the American Civil War, by Ben Thompson – Faced with a host of students who want war books they can read, I ordered some graphic novels and this book, by Ben Thompson.  Reading Guts & Glory is like having the opportunity to have dinner with someone who loves the Civil War so much, he makes you love it, too.  Told in a very casual style (in fact, at one point, I have to resort to Urban Dictionary), Thompson tells the stories from the war that elementary students want to hear, without overloading them with dates and statistics.  I’m hoping for more American history books from Ben Thompson.

Titanic – Unsinkable, by Gordon Korman (Reading Level 5.7) - One of the great pleasures of teaching elementary school is the excuse it gives me to read books written for middle grade readers.  Today, I picked up the first book of Gordon Korman's Titanic series.  I have never really been interested in the sinking of the Titanic, but I couldn't put this book down.  Korman has created such compelling characters in Unsinkable that I had to keep reading to see what would happen to them next.

The book, which begins in Belfast in 1912, has a Dickensonian beginning. Two young boys pickpocket from a surprisingly rich man. The thieves are immediately likable, Paddy is an avid reader and Daniel would have been a engineer or a designer in another life.  Their life is a rough one though, and due to the twists and turns of fate, Paddy ends up as a stowaway on the Titanic.

Joining him on his shipboard adventures are his unlikely companions, Sophie, Juliana, and Alfie. Sophie is the daughter of the embarrassingly public American suffragette, Amelia Bronson.  Juliana is the oft-ignored daughter of the Earl of Glomford, who is traveling to Texas to meet with a Texas oilman. Alfie is an underage steward, on board to travel with his dad, who works in the boiler room.

As the story progresses, Korman guides us around the Titanic as the youngster's weave in and out of each other's lives.  Korman's descriptions of the ship and its passengers left me longing for more.  Did that person really travel on the Titanic?  Did the dining room really look like that?

My original plan had been to pick a student to be the coveted first-reader of a new book, but now I'm wondering if Unsinkable should be our next read-aloud.  What a great decision to need to make!

Sisters, by Raina Telegemeiar (Reading Level 2.7) – Students requested that I order this graphic novel, about the perfectly believable relationship between two sisters, for our classroom library and it’s been circulating since it arrived.  Much of the story occurs while the sisters are traveling with their mom and baby brother on a long distance car ride.  Many adults can relate to how much fun that is in real families and  the conflicts are believably portrayed.  Although I haven’t read many graphic novels, one thing I really appreciated in this one was that the flashbacks (which sometimes confuse students) are indicated with different page coloring.