Third Grade Readers’ Theatre Recordings

Liz’s class:

Or go to: http://staff.washington.edu/destinee/miller_liz.mp3 

Mary Beth’s class:

Or go to:  http://staff.washington.edu/destinee/miller_mb.mp3

There is such a thing as a free lunch

My poetry books talks for the fifth graders went well today. The best part wasn’t the book talks themselves, though, (which you can see here), but the part where they followed me to the library and tore up the poetry section (don’t worry, I’m using “tore up” figuratively). Some readers’ advisory highlights:

• Poetry about horses
• Shakespeare’s sonnets
• More poems for two voices
• An “easy short” poem
• Robert Frost

Most of the books I talked got check out, too. Here’s a pic of my display:

After the fifth graders were taken care of, I went to work on getting the third grade readers’ theatre onto my blog. It’s a long story because I had to keep changing file types in order to edit the audio with Audacity (which is, incidentally, surprisingly easy to use), and then I realized I couldn’t upload audio onto a WordPress blog and that I’d have to host it on my UW space, but I didn’t want to download SFTP onto the Bush School computers, so I just emailed myself the files and I’ll have to put the plays up when I’m on campus next. Whew.

And let me now take time to acknowledge how wonderful Bush School parents are. They host an amazing lunch for the faculty and staff two or three times a year and today was one of those days. I got to go enjoy it with Lisa. I even got to take home a plant! (I asked which would be the hardest to kill and they pointed me towards the primroses.)

One last thing: there was a small book shelving crisis at the library yesterday (there were so many books to be shelved they started stacking up on the ground around the carts) so I went ahead and reshelved all the books from the displays that were taken down today (my award winners and the red books for V-Day). At the iSchool they tell you that when you’re doing a DFW you’re not there as an intern everyone can dump unpleasant tasks on, you’re there to learn important skills. This sometimes gets translated as, “You’re not there to shelve books.” But sometimes everyone’s got to pitch in and shelve some books. That’s just how it is. (And, you know, it’s pretty good exercise–lots of deep knee-bends.)

Lorraine Visits

Today my DFW adviser, Lorraine Bruce, visited Bush to check on me. We talked about Facebook and how great the Bush School library is. She only stayed briefly, but it was a nice visit.

We recorded the 3rd grade Readers’ Theater and it went so well. I’m going to fix a few things with Audacity on Friday and then I’ll try to post them here.

Today in Readers’ Advisory:

• Horse Books in series:Thoroughbred
• Black History Books: Henry’s Freedom Box, Jalani and the Lock
• Ballet Books: Graphic Novel (winner of Siebel), Tallchief biography, PNW Ballet book
• Rock Music: Crosby Stills and Nash CD
• Funny Dog Books (read-alike for Chowder, What Pete Ate A-Z)
• Mom volunteer wanted a book to read to her 3- , 4- , and 5-year-old crowd: Charlotte’s Web. Many Moons (If You Decide to Go to the Moon read-alike).
• Hockey Books
• Lego Books (Bush only has one and it was checked out)
• Trickster Tales (Tops and Bottoms)

One small highlight from my day: We had some time with the kindergarteners before they had to go to P.E. today, so I played Simon Says with them. It is really fun to be Simon. Also, tomorrow is their 100th day of Kindergarten. Congats, kiddos.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday was a busy Wednesday at the Bush library. Here’s what went down:

3rd grade: Jody and I returned the kids’ computer catalog worksheets and talked about some of the problems we saw. Then we split into groups to do Readers Theatre. I took 10 kids to do “The Miller and his Donkey” and Jody took 4 to do a modern Cinderella. I assigned parts to the kids and we read through the play. We talked about Aesop and the moral of the story. I gave them some notes on how they could improve their storytelling, too. Next week is Mid-Winter break, but the week after that, we’ll record the plays.

Kindergarten and 2nd grade: I performed a story for the little ones today: “The Monkey’s Heart” which is an old Sawhili/Indian (depending on the version you read) tale. I wrote my own version to connect it to Valentine’s Day and when one of the students suggested a really good alternative ending, I put it in my final telling and the kids really liked it. Jody and I talked to the students about the differences between storytelling and story reading, too.

As usual, after we finish our story room time, Jody and I help the kids pick out books. I had, as usual, many requests for Star Wars. I also did some readers’ advisory with a boy who said the last thing he really enjoyed was a Woody Guthrie cd. So we found him a book about Woody Guthrie so he could learn more. There were also two 2nd grade girls who wanted to read the same book together. I helped them find books by just browsing the Beginning Readers section of the library. It’s not very big and we have a few duplicates there (though, in general, the Bush library has very few duplicates).

When I had some free time today, I also checked the catalog to see which books Bush already had from a list of Notable Picture Books Jody gave me. Bush only had 3 out of 12, so I think they’ll be ordering some.

I also contributed to a list Lindy and Lisa were making for a student designing an independent study. She wants to look at how written works are interpreted as movies, so I suggested we look at the list of Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. I also had a few favorites that I suggested:

• Clueless, based on Emma by Jane Austen
• The Shawshank Redemption, based on the short story by Stephen King
• The Hours, based on the book by Michael Cunningham and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• One Flew Over the Cuckoos Next, based on the book by Ken Kesey
• The Golden Compass, based on the book by Philip Pullman

When I took my storytelling class last quarter, we made a list of “fillers” or things you can do when you have a few minutes and a bunch of kids. I already knew a ton from my experience with preschoolers, and today I had a chance to use one while the kindergarteners waited to go to P.E. I lead them in a chorus of theme song from “The Elephant Show” which goes like this:

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Oh, Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.
I do.