Science Story Times that ROCK!

Here is my presentation from the Georgia Children's Literature Conference on science story times. Many of the story times I describe in my presentation have been highlighted here on this blog, but now they are all in one place! If you attended my presentation - THANK YOU - since I am posting this on Thursday night, before I actually present, I hope you enjoyed the presentation and I didn't do anything too embarrassing - like tripping over my laptop cord (yep, happened before). Thank you to the Georgia Children's Literature Conference for letting me present!

Science Storytimes

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

Reader's Theater performance

This is a PowerPoint that my 4th grade readers theater group did with Melissa Stewart's FABULOUS readers theater script (that goes along with her book, Under the Snow).- they drew the pictures to go along with the book and this was the background during their "live" performance. I had them add the sound to the PowerPoint yesterday so that I could post it. I had a hard time finding a place to "host" it so that you could hear the sound, this is the result - my voice is the first voice you hear and it sounds like I am talking with my nose plugged - which I was not and it does not sound that way on the original PowerPoint, but, you'll at least get to see what my kids have been doing. Next project for this group, they are choosing a book and writing their own readers theater that they will perform for their parents near the end of school in May!

Check out the slide show here.

Leprechauns & Rainbows

My Favorite holiday is almost upon us - St. Patrick's day! I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl from Massachusetts so of course St. Patrick's day was always a big holiday where I grew up, so I try and share a little of the history and music with my students (most of whom don't know what the holiday is!).

This year my St. Pat's story time is all about those funny little people - the leprechauns! The story: That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting (a daughter of Ireland) The activity: making rainbows using science. I turn off the lights and have a glass of water, a flashlight and a piece of white card stock - I talk about how rainbows form and then shine the light into the glass of water and a rainbow appears on the white paper - MAGIC! Then I turn the lights back on and pass out rainbow glasses (I found these in our science lab, but you can order them through Steve Spangler Science also) and the kids LOVE these.

I have already started celebrating the holiday and I made an Irish feast last night, corned beef & cabbage, bangers & mash (Irish sausages & mashed potatoes) and homemade brown Irish soda bread (new recipe, which was yummy!)

Don't forget to wear your green on Wednesday!

Dr. Seuss Project

Wanted to give an update on how my first FLIP video camera project went! - It went better than I expected and I learned a lot. The teacher was so happy at the outcome and the kids seemed to love seeing their "book ads" on tv in the morning. I have tried to figure out a way I could post them here, but they have students in them and I can't figure out how to put a black dot on their faces - but for next time I found a GREAT idea - have them put masks over their faces as they read - then I CAN post them, not only here, but on my schools website as well!

The biggest thing I learned - we need to use a tripod! The kids video taped each other (we had a groups of 5, one was the videographer and the others were on camera) and I realized that no matter how hard they tried, they wiggled the camera and the result was a wiggly video. I think that if the project involved shorter video clips or video clips where the subject would be moving, it might be ok to do it without a tripod, but for something like this a tripod is a must. I just hope that the tripods I already own work with the FLIP cameras.

I am hoping to try at least one more project this school year, but as we approach spring break and testing season, my teachers have so little time to do some FUN stuff like this.

Happy Read Across America Day!

Our school celebrated yesterday, but, I had a touch of the stripes yesterday....

The picture misses the fact that I did INDEED have painted stripes on my face and I had some striped tights on too!

But I did eat my lima beans yesterday and I am feeling much better today!

Getting Ready for Read Across America Day (week!)

As most of you know, Read Across America Day is next Tuesday, March 2nd. Due to some school scheduling conflicts, our school is celebrating it on Monday, March 1st, but here in the Media Center we are celebrating it all week.

Today, I am starting a collaborative lesson with a fourth grade class. We will be learning about how to write a book review with a little research thrown in. The class is divided up into 5 groups (about 5 students in each group), each group will choose a Dr. Seuss book to write a review of. All the students will read the book, then the students will write a review of the book. One student will be the researcher and will be in charge of finding one or two interesting facts about Dr. Seuss. The kids will then film a short book trailer (using the written review) using our new FLIP video cameras. The students will also include the cool fact about Dr. Seuss at the end of the review. I will then take the videos, clean them up a bit and we will air them, one per day, on our morning news show every day next week. I have done a quick little Google site to organize the project.

I am a little nervous that it will all get done by Friday, but I know that the kids are going to be SO excited to use the cameras and to have their work shown on the announcements.

My spring book fair is next week, so we will be very busy in here with that. On Monday, the literacy coach and myself have set up some guest readers (mainly, people in our school, such as the custodians, cafeteria ladies, school secretary, the principal, etc..) to read to each class. I am also sponsoring my 3rd annual faculty Dress Like a Book Character day (which reminds me, I need to figure out some prizes for that!) We are also encouraging all the teachers to include some special reading time in their day on Monday (but wouldn't it be nice if they did this EVERY DAY!)

Speaking of Dr. Seuss, Amy at Time to Renew has a cool Prezi presentation on the life of Dr. Seuss.

SNOW!

For the 2nd time this winter our area has been blanketed by snow. Luckily for us, it happened on a Friday afternoon so there will be no snow day and even better, no snow make up day (we were suppose to have yesterday and Monday off, but instead we have school due to flood and snow make up days - BLAH!)

Here are some pictures of the snow in Georgia yesterday and today. I just hope it melts on the roads today, I have plans tonight!!