Reader's Theater podcasts

We have successfully finished our first unit of Reader's Theater with our fourth graders. This group had a harder time understanding the "performing" aspect, but I think they did well. It will be interesting to see how they improve when we do this next unit with them.

Here is our podcast of the Tuesday group's Reader's Theater. Once again, the audio is a bit too loud in spots, so I need to work on my recording techniques before we do this again.

My favorite is the student who plays the Wolf in the True Story podcast.

The Three Little Pigs Reader's Theater based on the book by James Marshall

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The True Story of The Three Little Pigs a Reader's Theater based on the book by Jon Sciezka

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PLEASE Vote for ME

Ok, so I was asked by my district office to apply for this contest from Follett - the prize is a trip to their user conference in March, which looks AWESOME. We use their Destiny products and I love them - they are super easy to use and our county office also makes it easy for us to use these products!

So yesterday I came up with an idea for a video entry - it is quite cheesy and I have forever embarrassed my children with this, but it was fun.

If you have a chance, please look at the video on the site and vote for me - you can vote by logging into Facebook or you can register on their site - if you register on their site PLEASE make sure when they send you a confirmation email to click on the link (which takes you back to the site) then click on my video AGAIN and click VOTE.

THANKS!!

I have embeded the video here, but it looks a litle "off", so you can also go here to watch and vote.

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin

Last week I used the book How Many Seeds In A Pumpkin by Margaret McNamara. It is a great seasonal book that incorporates math and counting/estimating skills. Since we hosted a school wide math night two weeks ago, this was the perfect tie in.

For our activity I first showed the students a video I put together, it included a clip about how a pumpkin grows that I downloaded from Discovery Education (this is a subscription site, but if you teach in the state of GA we do have access to it), a time lapse video from YouTube about growing a HUGE pumpkin and a cute music video from Brian Vogan, "That's How a Pumpkin Grows". Then we started counting pumpkin seeds - for my older students (2nd grade and up) I gave each table a big pile of seeds and they had to count the seeds by grouping them in groups of 2's, 5's or 10's. They had to write down how many groups they had and then write down how many seeds they had. For my younger students, I made index cards with either 2,5 or 10 written on it. They had to glue the number of seeds that it listed onto the card, then each table counted by the number on the card (so one table had cards with 5's on them and we counted by 5's etc..).

Here is a slide show on how the lesson went. This week I start one of my FAVORITE story times of all - Boo Bubbles - will post pictures soon!

Welcome COMO attendees

Thank you for coming to my session and visiting my blog. Below is my presentation from today's GA COMO presentation Reader's Theater with a Technology Twist.

Reader’s theater with a technology twist

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

Books that brought me to tears and guess who

yeah, so this week not one but TWO picture books made me a little teary - you might chalk it up to the fact that my first born asked a girl to homecoming this week and she said YES (his first "date") but even if your first born isn't about to go on his first date, these might make you a misty eyed.

Knuffle Bunny Free by Mo Willems - this book didn't get me until the end - and I won't reveal the ending, but if you enjoyed Mo's previous Knuffle Bunny books, this one won't disappoint. Also, head over to Mo's blog and check out a little audio of him and the REAL Trixie - so sweet!!

The other book is one I didn't expect to get teary over, but did - My Mommy Hung The Moon: a Love Story by Jamie Lee Curtis, illustrated by Laura Cornell. In this book the mommy is a super hero that creates rainbows and bakes cookies and is good at everything. I think I cried at this book thinking of my own mommy, who is still a super hero in my eyes. I am actually getting this book for my Mom for her birthday this month, you are never too old to get a picture book as a gift! Right now in my house (1 teenager, 1 almost teenager and a 10 year old) nobody thinks I hung the moon, so maybe I was a little misty eyed for the days when I got big hugs whenever I came home and big kisses every night before bed.

In Media Center news, it has been BUSY here - and I will post about some of the goings on here next week, but for now I wanted to leave you with a little October project I am starting. I am going to have a MYSTERY person every week in October. I have a picture of the person behind a mask and a few clues about the person. The people are all people that we study here as part of our social studies curriculum. Students can guess who and I will choose some winners for a chance to choose a prize out of my prize box.

can you guess who??




hint: invented many things and was one of the first people to create a library