"week 18" BLACK HISTORY MONTH AND NAME TAGS

Once again, I am finding it difficult to decide what I should do with the time I have for my library classes.  Each class is only 45 minutes long, and the last 15 to 20 minutes are spent "checking out books".  That leaves, at most, 25 minutes to get everyone situated to read or work on something.  That is not a lot of time when you have so much you can do, like reading books, watching book trailers or doing an activity.... I have to make decisions about what I can do with my classes and what I sadly have to put aside.

Black History Month brings up a big topic and one that is not easy to address with a story.  I discovered that the library has some fantastic titles and I found some truly wonderful readings of stories on storylineonline.net.  But I have promised for the past several "weeks" that we would make new name tags - it couldn't be put off any longer. 

For Pre-K, I read A color of his own by Leo Lionni.  This book is just an introduction to the many different colors that even the same species can have.  I found a great worksheet for them to work on while we do check out.  It is a page of chameleons from the book with the color printed in the chameleon.  They should recognize the words and color that chameleon that color. 

   


There is only time to read one book in the younger grades (K and 1) because of the time needed to work on the name tags.  I chose The colors of us by karen Katz (also the author of My First Chinese New Year.)

 I love the illustrations in this book and I love all of the beautiful words used for the color "brown":  cinnamon, coffee, toffee, butterscotch, golden brown like pizza crust, peanut butter colored, chocolate.....it makes me hungry to read this! 

The name tags are a big hit, as I expected.  The students loved making the first name tags we used and reminded me that I promised they could take them home when we were done with them.  The old name tags had some problems, though, like the yarn being "itchy" on necks and the yarn tearing out of the index card (requiring repairs), and not helping if the students were seated in front of me in the story pit.

The new name tags are paper plates - divided in half with names written on both halves.  After decorating them, the students cut them in half on the line provided. We are going to laminate these halves and then punch holes and add string so that a half hangs on the chest and another half hangs on the back....sort of like an Egyptian collar.  The students seemed to really like the idea.

We worked on name tags up to the third grade.  Fourth and Fifth graders returned to our ongoing project:  Library Wars.  We are on a quest to learn what the library catalog is, what it can do for a person, and how to locate information and books in the library after we get the "address" (call number) of the book from the catalog.  This quest is set up like a video game - the students work at their own pace to answer a series of worksheets that have them locating information, using the catalog, and learning how books are sorted in the library.  After completing a worksheet with 100% accuracy, they win a prize and can call that section "completed" and move on.  We have two "sections" and then a "boss level" so far.  I will be the boss monster and they have to prove to me that they have learned sufficiently before they complete the game and win the final prize.