POWERLESS by Matthew Cody

I am trying to spend a tiny bit more time reading books that aren't usually my type. As a K-5 librarian, I have to have books to recommend to all readers and I have discovered that some readers make it easier for me. We have the same tastes. So, I know that in order to do my job well, I need to expand my reading a bit. When I was in the classroom, I had lots of fantasy and sci-fi readers and I could recommend books and series but I didn't feel like I had to know as many as I do now. I only had to know books to recommend to the 26+ kids in my class. If I knew them well, it was easy to read books with them in mind.

Since this is the 2nd year in this school, I am just starting to know many of the kids as readers. I've noticed that there are lots of books that kids are reading that I just can't talk about. The 5th graders can't get enough of The Percy Jackson Series. I am not always a huge fantasy fan and this book didn't look like one I'd like. So, I put it off. But, I realized a few weeks ago, that I really needed to see what all the hype was. I read THE LIGHTNING THIEF and LOVED it. I so understand the excitement and I can't wait to see the movie.

Tony at Learn Me Sumthin' has been reviewing books on his blog that I wouldn't normally pick up. But after I so loved LIGHTNING THIEF that I had so adamantly avoided, I decided to give a few others a try.

I finished POWERLESS by Matthew Cody (recommended by Tony) last weekend. It is about a boy who moves into a new neighborhood. Many of the kids in the neighborhood have super powers. Some can fly. Others are strong, etc. He is the only one of his friends without a power. But there is a little mystery in the town. Kids lose their powers (and the memories of those powers) on their 13th birthdays. No one can figure out why but they decide they need to.

POWERLESS is a fun story. It has the elements of a superhero comic book but is a good story with a pretty apparent theme. The whole concept of the story is fun and I found myself wanting to continue reading to see what happened. This is a longer book--close to 300 pages. I think it would be a great fun read for 4th and 5th graders and I have a few 5th grade boys I'll recommend it to this week.

I am learning to stretch myself a bit as a reader in this new job and I'm glad that I am. I have discovered some great books that I wouldn't have otherwise discovered.

3rd Graders Learn About the SMART Board

With some of our Scholastic Book Fair profits this year, I was able to purchase a SMART Board for the library at school. We couldn't afford the entire system but Scholastic offers the Interactive Whiteboard piece in their Book Fair Profits catalog. Since we have a projector and speakers in the library, I decided I'd add one piece at a time as we could afford them and I am glad that we did. It might take us a few years to get the whole thing pulled together but it works well for now.

As part of the purchase, I was entitled to a one hour orientation. Michelle Wolfe is our SMART Board rep and she contacted me to set something up. Instead of giving me the orientation, I asked her if she'd be willing to give an orientation to a group of 3rd graders. Michelle happily agreed.

Over the past few years, I have been thinking about how we can use these tools to meet the needs of our 21st Century Learners. I keep going back to the documents such as NCTE's Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment, ISTE NETS for Students, and Partnership for 21st Century Skills' Framework for 21st Century Learning. I've been reflecting on ideas in articles like "It's Not About the Tools. It's About the Skills". I worry that we are using some new tools in ways that don't really change learning for our students. This article about the announcements of Apple's iPad reminded me just how important this was. For me, the important points from all of these documents are the focus on creation, communication, purpose and audience. I want to make sure that the SMART Board in our library becomes a tool for students instead of a tool for teachers to give information.

My thinking was that if we want the SMART Board to be used as a tool for learning--as something beyond a teacher tool, it was important that kids be familiar with and able to use the board. So, we put together a team of 20+ 3rd graders who will serve as our initial Think Tank. They volunteered for the position, knowing it would mean giving up recess time throughout the year. They were quite excited about their first meeting learning all they could about the board. Michelle was great--introducing them to many of the tools available on the software. Many had not had much experience with the SMART Board so they loved the whole nature of the touchscreen.

We decided to place the SMART Board on a wall in the library that is a little bit off to the side. Because so many of the "walls" in our library are windows, we were limited in our options. But I think the place that we chose will work well. It is a spot where a whole class can gather if needed. But it is also off to the side so kids can work on the SMART Board while other things are going on in the library. It is not front and center.

The students who were trained will be able to play a bit with the SMART Board over the next few months. I think that tinkering time will be critical. I think it will take a while for the newness of the tool to wear off but I think that as they play, kids will have great ideas for the kinds of things they might create. Another tool to communicate their learning, to problem solve, and to design. I imagine they'll design games, figure out ways to include their own photos, etc. use the software to revise writing, storytelling, and more. I'll plan to meet with the team every few weeks to reflect on things they've learned, share some new things and brainstorm how the boards can be used to better support their learning.

I'll keep you posted!

Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5

I introduced Stopmotion Animation to several classes in grades 2-5 this week during library time. One of my goals this year is to give kids lots of possibilities for creation. I want them to see how things are created and invite them into the creation process. With lots of new tools, our students will have lots of new ways to communicate their learning. As part of a district grant that we received last year, we were able to put FRAMES on our entire laptop lab in the library. Since kids have had so much success on PIXIE, we thought FRAMES was a great way to expand their work to animation. I think that if our students can see how different forms of media are created, they will become much more critical users of information, which is so important.

FRAMES has turned out to be a great tool for introducing animation to kids. It is easy to use and kids can see the process for creating animation and then they begin to watch animation a bit differently. Because the program FRAMES has a camera feature, and I am working with our art teacher to create a claymation project with 4th graders, I figured it was a good time to introduce the tool to lots of kids.

I have done a lot of reading on Kevin's blog and have been inspired over the year by the things his kids do with animation. He has so many great ways to work with kids in creating stopmotion. I've followed his reflections carefully and need to revisit them.

I started the lessons this week by showing kids several examples of stopmotion. I've been collecting interesting "mentor" pieces to show kids at various stages of the process and picked a few to show them the variety of things stopmotion could do. Some of the clips I shared included:

You Tube Frog and Toad Claymation

Mary Lee's "Setting Up My Desk Area"

Lego Build It Together

A Sample from the Parkway Film Festival

The Making of Frog and Toad Explained (via Kevin's blog post)

I showed a few examples with Post-It notes and I showed my daughter's stopmotion so they could get a sense of how many photos something like this takes. (Hers took 18 photos for this 3 second movie.)

This time around, sharing these were to let kids know many of the things that can be done with this. We will most likely revisit some of these later to look more closely at craft, message, etc. Today was just an invitation in.

Kids jumped in realizing how the things they've seen recently were made with this technique. Many kids mentioned a scene in iCarly in which Spencer creates a stopmotion movie.

Following the samples, I showed them, in just a few minutes, the basics of how to create stop motion with photographs in FRAMES. That meant teaching them to use the camera, demonstrating me taking several pictures of myself with slight changes and then playing the results. The total length of the lesson was about 10 minutes which included examples of Stopmotion as well as the intro to FRAMES.

My best teaching has always happened when I throw a few basic ideas out to kids and let them play. I can then use student work and discoveries in future lessons. I find that if I am too focused on product at first, kids produce things that look like mine. In order to let them explore and find new ways to use the new tools I've been introducing, I want to give them lots of play time with little direction so they are free to figure things out and open up possibilities for everyone. Just as I expected, this 10 minute minilesson really gave kids a way into this type of creation. Kids jumped right in and had a ball. And, they came up with things I would never have thought of. It was fun to watch different classes and different ages approach the same introduction. I learned so much watching different kids' spin on the software.

Kids came up with such great ideas and kids began to build on each other's thinking. The younger kids immediately began to do what they do best--tell stories using props such as puppets, magnetic sets, etc. Some students used legos to try to capture the sequence of building. Others used board games to try to capture the moves on a strategy game. Others found some of the dramatic play toys that we have in the library and began retelling old favorites using stopmotion. Others used books, objects sitting around the room, a train set in the building toy area of the library, their own faces, and more. They were able to see so many possibilities in the 20 minutes they had to play. Many left with plans for their next visit and many asked to come in and add to their creations during lunch. My hope is that these eventually become possibilities for them to share their learning. When they need to share or present information, this gives them a new way to synthesize their learning. A new way to share their thinking with others.

So often, as teachers with new technology, I think we are hesitant about introducing something that is new to us. We feel the need to learn it well first. But I think that might be holding lots of us back from getting our students' hands on these new tools. I learned the very basics of FRAMES--just enough to invite them to give it a try--in about 10 minutes. Then as kids played and I watched, I learned so many more about the tool as they discovered them. I think it was a richer experience than it would have been had I known the entire program well because the kids were in charge. Except for the few things I knew, they had to problem solve to figure out the others. I also think that because I didn't have much experience with it, kids were able to go off and try a variety of things rather than only the 1-2 things I shared. They knew it was open tinkering time and I think that is critical.

Even as I write this, I am amazed at how much kids did in just 20 minutes. I can't wait to see where they go next and what they do when I introduce ideas such as storyboarding, clay animation, etc. It will be interesting to hear their conversations about the things they notice outside of school--times when photos are manipulated, etc I didn't realize how much they would learn from this one tool.

Kevin Hodgson will be doing a session for teachers on digital storybooks at our Dublin Literacy Conference later this month. He is also doing a parent/child session on stopmotion that is getting huge response. Looking forward to learning more from him and the other speakers then.

Artist Michelle Stitzlein visits Our School

We have a great art teacher at our school. He is always busy doing great work with kids and is always thinking about big picture. This year, he organized a visit by a local artist, Michelle Stitzlein. She visited our school for two days last week and kids were able to work together to create pieces that will be put in our school courtyard.

Much of Michelle Stitzlein's art is art with recycled materials. We began the two day visit with a whole school assembly where Michelle shared her own art. It was amazing to see the creative process and the places she gets her ideas. As part of her slide show, she talked about her travels and the inspirations she finds for her art in different areas of the world. She also shared examples of other things she's found in her travels that have been created from recycled materials. Shoes, houses, etc. created from things that once had a different use. It was a fascinating presentation for both children and adults. She had so much to say about art, creativity, inspiration, taking care of our world, and more. All in such a short time.

For months, to get ready for the visit, our kids have been bringing in plastic bottle caps. Creating sculptures with children, using bottlecaps is one of her specialities. And her book LITTLE BOTTLECAP BOTTLECAP gives families lots of ideas for more projects they can do at home. It was amazing to see how many bottlecaps we collected at our school over the course of the last few months. And it was amazing to see how many sizes and colors bottlecaps come in.

For the two days that Michelle visited, each class was able to join her in the gym to work on one of the community pieces that were made. Before her visit, classes painted the pieces. During her visit, the kids worked in small groups to choose the best caps for each space, decide on the placement of the bottlecaps, and use drills to secure the caps to the pieces.

We ended up with several great large pieces, many of which will be placed around our courtyard and other places in the school.

This was a great visit. Michelle was amazing with the students. I am sure she opened up lots of possibilities for our students in terms of creativity. I love community projects and the focus on recycled art was a great theme, I thought. I think her work with kids will have a lasting impact in so many ways. We are lucky to have such an amazing local artist to work with our students.

January Mosaic

Eleven of this month's pictures feature food or a food-related event. (hmmm...)

Ten are about the cold and dark of winter.

Four pictures are of animals. One dog is peeking out of the curtains. Only the cat is ours.

Three were taken at school.

Which one is your favorite?

A Great New ABC Book--My New Favorite Baby Gift

I loved Margaret Wise Brown's SLEEPY ABC the second I saw it at Cover to Cover. The book is illustrated by Karen Katz. What a great duo. And what a fun book. The illustrations of the babies and the colors make it such a happy book! The themes around all of the pages is a good-night theme with many ways to look at it. A few favorites are:

"B is for Baaaaaa

When the lambs

close their eyes"

"F is for Feet that

won't fall asleep"

You can't tell by my examples but this is also a rhyming books. Every double page rhymes so it has a rhythm that kids will love. This book is my new favorite baby gift. I also think primary kids would love it. And it could serve as a mentor text to anyone writing his/her own ABC book--as a model of writing or as a way to think about a topic, such as bedtime.

Poetry Friday -- Swimming

photo by gabyu

SWIMMING

First it's about the shock of the cold

and the strength of the first five laps.

Then, for the next howevermany laps,

it's about the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the cardinal outside my window this morning

and the things I need to do this weekend

and the things that didn't get done today.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the girl in the purple bikini in the lane next to me.

She swims so fast it seems like she's on top of the water

instead of in it,

like I am.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the smell of the chlorine

and the push off the wall.

And the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

Finally it's about the deliciously hot water of the shower

and the sting of the cold air on my damp head.

It's about

the drive home and

the late dinner and

the falling asleep.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2010

This is a poem about what it's like to swim laps. While it might look tedious from the deck (back and forth, back and forth), there's actually a lot going on inside my head while I swim. Besides working to keep track of my lap count, I think about my day, plan what needs to get done tomorrow, and make up stories about the swimmers around me. The counting keeps me focused, though, and makes my swim a 30 or 40 minute meditation. And no matter what else my mind is doing, the swim is always about the rhythm and the breathing and the black line below me.

Anastasia has the Poetry Friday round up today at Picture Book of the Day.

As you can see in the sidebar, we only have a month of hosts left for the Poetry Friday round up. If you'd like to host, pick a Friday in March, April, May, June or July (except July 16 -- I'm taking that one) and leave a message in the comments or send an email to me at mlhahn AT earthlink DOT net.

CitizenKid: Thinking in Terms of a Village

This is the final post about the Kids Can Press series, CitizenKid. CitizenKid is "A collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens."

We're featuring the CitizenKid series because one of the CitizenKid authors, David J. Smith, author of the books reviewed in this post, will be at the February 20, 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference.

The theme of this year's conference, our 21st, is "Celebrating 21st Century Literacies." From the NCTE Position Statement on 21st Century Literacies, we know that "Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

There will certainly be authors and presenters at the conference whose topics deal with the tools of technology, multi-media texts, and information management. Just as important, there will be a focus on relationships, cross-cultural collaboration, and the global community.

We hope you'll consider joining us for the day on February 20 at the Dublin Literacy Conference. Come meet David J. Smith and hear him speak! You can find registration information here.

If the World Were a Village

by David J. Smith

illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong

Kids Can Press, 2002

Cross-cultural problem solving and global information sharing are among the 21st Century Literacies we need to help our students (and likely ourselves) to develop. Yet how to impart in our students an understanding of the world when it is so huge and varied and incomprehensibly complex?

David J. Smith has one answer: reduce the world's population of 6 billion and some to a village of 100 that mathematically represents the world in a more understandable way.

Nationalities: Of the 100 people in the village, 61 are from Asia; 5 are from Canada and the United States.

Languages: More than half the people in the village speak just 8 languages, even though there are almost 6000 languages in the village of 100. "If you could say hello in these 8 languages, you could greet well over half the people in the village." That sounds like a fine place to start!

Food: Along with sheep, goats, cows, pigs, camels and horses, the global village has 189 chickens -- nearly twice as many as the people in the village!

But here's where some really hard discussions can start to take place. Although there is plenty of food in the village, it is not distributed equally. 60 of the 100 people in the village are always hungry. Only 24 always have enough to eat. Whoa.

Other "whoa" moments are likely to occur when you read about the air and water, school and literacy, money and possessions, and electricity. We (in the United States) have so much, and yet we represent such a small part of the village.

Smith includes notes for adults about teaching "world-mindedness." A strong sense of world geography is the starting place, and he recommends connecting learning with doing.

If America Were a Village

by David J. Smith

illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong

Kids Can Press, 2009

If you want to start a little closer to home helping your students to think about where they fit into a bigger picture, this is the book for you. The "chapters" or "topics" are a bit different than those in If The World Were A Village, and they are presented as questions: "Who are we?", "Where do we come from?", "What do we own?", etc. In lots of the sections, interesting historical comparisons are made.

For example, in "Where do we come from?" we learn that "If the America of today were a village of 100: 15 would be of German ancestry, 11 would be of Irish ancestry, 9 African, 9 English, 7 Mexican, 6 Italian, 3 Polish, 3 French, 3 Native American, 2 Scottish, 2 Dutch, 2 Norwegian, 1 Scotch-Irish, and 1 Swedish." In 1790, those numbers would have been very different. At that time, "53 would have come from England, 19 from Africa (most of them slaves), 11 from Scotland and Ireland and 7 from Germany." We teach about immigration trends in American history, but thinking in terms of the village of 100 makes history come to life.

As with If The World Were A Village, reading this book with your students will bring up hard realities and hard questions. We are a rich nation -- how do we share our wealth? We use more energy and water than any other nation -- how can we slow this down and be more responsible world citizens? We have a great variety of cultures and religions and lifestyles in our country --how can we be more accepting of others? A new immigrant to the United States arrives every 27 seconds -- what are we doing to make them feel welcome?

We hope you've enjoyed this week's posts on the CitizenKid series from Kids Can Press. What a great collection of books to have in your classroom and to use to open the walls of your classroom and let the world in.

One Hen

How to Build Your Own Country

Tree of Life

One Well

Ryan & Jimmy

If the World Were A Village

If America Were A Village

CitizenKid: One Well

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the Kids Can Press series, CitizenKid. CitizenKid is "A collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens."

We're featuring the CitizenKid series because one of the CitizenKid authors, David J. Smith, will be at the February 20, 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference.

The theme of this year's conference, our 21st, is "Celebrating 21st Century Literacies." From theNCTE Position Statement on 21st Century Literacies, we know that "Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

There will certainly be authors and presenters at the conference whose topics deal with the tools of technology, multi-media texts, and information management. Just as important, there will be a focus on relationships, cross-cultural collaboration, and the global community.

We hope you'll consider joining us for the day on February 20 at the Dublin Literacy Conference. You can find registration information here.

One Well: The Story of Water on Earth

by Rochelle Strauss

illustrated by Rosemary Woods

Kids Can Press, 2007

Of all our natural resources, it is perhaps our water that we take most for granted. At least in our part of the world.

We should remember that there is a finite and discrete amount of water on our planet. The water we have is the same water that has been here for billions of years. We should think of our water as one global well.

This book has short articles with gorgeous, detailed illustrations and fact boxes that tell about the water cycle, how plants and animals need and use water, water as a habitat, and the human impact on the water we share.

This is a great book to share along with...

Ryan and Jimmy: And the Well in Africa That Brought Them Together

by Herb Shoveller

Kids Can Press, first paperback edition 2008

In 1998, a Canadian first grader named Ryan Hreljac learned how difficult it is for people in other parts of the world to get fresh water. His teacher told him it only cost $70 to build a well for an entire village. He went home and asked his parents for the money, but they made him work to earn it. And work he did. One chore at a time, a few dollars at a time, Ryan earned the whole $70.

When he went to deliver his donation, he found out that the $70 would only buy the hand pump; he needed $2000 for the whole well. That didn't stop Ryan. Between his determination and the ripple effect caused by his story, he built a well in a village in Uganda. He also became friends with Jimmy, a boy from the village, visited the village, and went to school there for a day.

Ryan's family remained close to Jimmy even during a resurgence of the rebel war in Uganda. They managed to get Jimmy a flight out and a visa to visit Canada so that he could attend a conference with Ryan and tell the story of the well in his village. While he was in Canada, the fighting in Uganda got worse and he applied for and received refugee status. First, Ryan's well changed his life, and then Ryan's family accepted him as their fourth son, giving him a chance at a kind of life he never even dreamed existed when he lived in Uganda.

This book is further proof that anyone, even children, can make the world a better place, one small change at a time.

CitizenKid: Tree of Life

This is the third in a series of posts about the Kids Can Press series, CitizenKid. CitizenKid is "A collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens."

We're featuring the CitizenKid series because one of the CitizenKid authors, David J. Smith, will be at the February 20, 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference.

The theme of this year's conference, our 21st, is "Celebrating 21st Century Literacies." From the NCTE Position Statement on 21st Century Literacies, we know that "Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

There will certainly be authors and presenters at the conference whose topics deal with the tools of technology, multi-media texts, and information management. Just as important, there will be a focus on relationships, cross-cultural collaboration, and the global community.

We hope you'll consider joining us for the day on February 20 at the Dublin Literacy Conference. You can find registration information here.

Tree of Life: The Incredible Biodiversity of Life on Earth

by Rochelle Strauss

illustrated by Margot Thompson

Kids Can Press, 2004

This is a fascinating book that makes taxonomy, the classification of living organisms, accessible to young readers by using the metaphor of The Tree of Life. On The Tree of Life are 5 branches -- the 5 kingdoms of living things: the Kingdoms of Monera (bacteria), Fungi, Protoctista (paramecia, amoebas, algae, etc.), Plants, and Animals.

The metaphor is further extended to the leaves on the tree: "If each species were represented by a leaf, there would be 1,750,000 leaves on the Tree of Life."

On each double-page spread about a Kingdom, there is information about the specifics of that Kingdom and about the way the rest of the Tree of Life depends on it. And there is a visual that shows how many of the 1,750,000 species (leaves on the Tree of Life) come from that Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Animals has 1,318,000 species, 1,265,000 of which are invertebrates. Of the 52,500 vertebrates, only 4,640 of the species are mammals. Of the mammals, humans are one of the 233 species of primates. "Humans -- 1 leaf on the Tree of Life."

Humankind's place in the "Incredible Biodiversity of Life on Earth" is so small, and yet so much depends on the ways we do (and don't) care for our planet. I know that last bullet point on NCTE's list of 21st Century Literacies refers to the ethical responsibilities required by the complex environments we have created with the tools of technology, but I can't help thinking they refer to the ethical responsibilities required by the complex environment of the Earth, too.