Fifth graders and first graders at Prospect are participating in the
Global Read Aloud. What's that? Books have been chosen for classes to read together over a 6-week time period. During that time, they not only read in the classroom but also make connections to other groups and classes that are reading the same book, and even the authors!
There are different books for different age levels. Our fifth graders are participating by having a class read-aloud of
Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. In addition to having class discussions and reading responses, they are also connecting with others outside of our school. They connected with other classes in a "Mystery Skype," in which they had to ask yes and no questions to figure out where the other class was. They will be connecting with these classes again later after they finish the book to discuss the story. They also have email penpals with students from The Lane school and are chatting about their thoughts, theories, and predictions about the story. In MRC, we are interacting with the author through videos in which she answers student questions.
First graders are participating in the Global Read Aloud with an author study of Amy Krouse Rosenthal. We just started this week with the book
Chopsticks.
In
Chopsticks, two chopsticks are always doing things together, until one gets hurt and needs to rest for over a week. The hurt chopstick encourages his buddy to go out and try new things, which in the end, helped strengthen them both. After reading, the first graders gave some ideas of what they like to do alone and what they like to do together with someone else. We shared these ideas online in three Padlets.
Here are
1G's ideas,
1M's ideas, and
1T's ideas.
After book checkout, some of the first graders tried out using chopsticks to pick up erasers.
We are looking forward to reading more of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's books in the next few weeks in MRC!
There are different books for different age levels. Our fifth graders are participating by having a class read-aloud of Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. In addition to having class discussions and reading responses, they are also connecting with others outside of our school. They connected with other classes in a "Mystery Skype," in which they had to ask yes and no questions to figure out where the other class was. They will be connecting with these classes again later after they finish the book to discuss the story. They also have email penpals with students from The Lane school and are chatting about their thoughts, theories, and predictions about the story. In MRC, we are interacting with the author through videos in which she answers student questions.
She
had a wonderful message for students. She explained her journey as a
writer. As a child, she loved getting positive comments about her
writing and even won an award in elementary school. That felt great!
However, later, a peer called her word choice weird. After that, she
stuck to writing only nonfiction, including writing for her school
newspaper. 
As
an adult, she worked in a bookstore and used some of her writing
talents to work in marketing. Being surrounded by authors during author
events and running writing workshops sparked a desire to begin writing
again. Still held back by fear, she began writing picture books in
secret. Eventually, Mouse was Mad was published in 2009, followed by her middle grade books, including A Crooked Kind of Perfect.
She described getting great reviews, which made her feel good, although
many mentioned her books how wonderful her character development was
but that the books did not have much plot. She defined herself by these
reviews, accepting that that was who she was as a writer - she was a
writer who wrote more introspective, thoughtful books focused on
characters. When her son asked her to write a book with "HAM" - humor,
adventure, and mystery, she at first said she couldn't, but gave it a
try! She looked at many other books as models, including Roald Dahl's
works, and the end result was Milo Speck, Accidental Agent. Please run and get this creative adventure book immediately!
The second graders all did research in the MRC using our eresource PebbleGo. They researched several different topics that they were interested in, and then chose one of their topics to create a book. In addition to creating a paper book, some of them created an eBook, in which they recorded their voice narrating their book. Click on the links below to see their eBooks. 
We exported each book into a video file that can be viewed from home. See Mrs. Aren's AM class below: 
At the end of March, Chris Grabenstein, author of our One Book, One School book Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library, talked to 1st-5th graders in a very engaging assembly! He talked about his writing process and with the students' help, improvised a story about a skiing squirrel named Darrell. His encouragement to keep on writing and revising fit in well with what students are learning about the writing process in the classroom. He also read from his new book, The Island of Dr. Libris. Many students were very excited to read that one next!
This week, Prospect students are voting for their favorite Monarch and Bluestem Award books from the list of twenty nominees. This is exciting because for these Student Choice awards, students all across Illinois vote to decide which book will win. Each year, the Illinois School Library Media Association (ISLMA) gives an award to the author and/or illustrator of the book that got the most votes from students.
