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Books!!!!!
The teacher-libarian and the LRT (who was the TL last year) went shopping. They spent three thousand dollars in three hours at the National Book Service in Toronto. They had two NBS employees following them around with scanners, scanning books in as they went, and they were constantly handing things over and having the clerk say, "You already ordered that one."
(Our school is rolling in cash for books this year - book room funding, independent reading program funding, home reading program funding, and library funding, for a combined total of more than twenty thousand dollars. We have to spend it all this year, though, so we're all shopping until we drop.)
Well, the books arrived yesterday.
There are nearly forty books for grade 5 social studies, most of which are for Ancient Civilizations. (I have yet to see an author who can make the Canadian Government unit look fun to a ten-year-old. If anyone knows of any, please let me know. There's another three grand to spend in the library.) There are series of books called, "Ancient Greek _______" - six books, including children, homes, religion, food, clothing, etc. There's an equivalent set for Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. There's the month of April, right there - I'll pair them up, have them do a short research project on one book, then the pairs will split up and join people doing the same topic in a different civilization. Those three will do a compare-and-contrast presentation for the class.
I'm going to grab one of the books already on the shelf (there are exactly ten ancient civ books already on library shelves. Ever tried doing a research project with ten books between thirty-three kids?)and do a model project for them - how to write the facts, what constitutes a fact, how to reorganize the facts into categories that work for them, and how to take those facts and write paragraphs with them - topic sentence, body sentences with examples, concluding sentence, they're getting the whole thing. Forget two-day research projects. I WANT this to take at least three weeks, preferably four. And there's another project to follow right after it, using the rest of the new library books.
This is going to be fun. I almost don't want to give up Social Studies for French next year. Almost.
Then again, we're starting "Le Prince Grenouille" right after Easter. That should be loads of fun. I'm limiting it to days we can get into the gym for practice, though. If I can get the gym teacher to agree to take his class for that period outside on a Wednesday, I can get Mondays and WEdnesdays both in the gym doing plays. I'll find filler stuff for the other days - whole-class practice and pronunciation review, probably. No kid in my class will ever get away with pronouncing "grenouille" as "greenoull."
It's the Friday before March Break! Everyone do a dance!!
The teacher-libarian and the LRT (who was the TL last year) went shopping. They spent three thousand dollars in three hours at the National Book Service in Toronto. They had two NBS employees following them around with scanners, scanning books in as they went, and they were constantly handing things over and having the clerk say, "You already ordered that one."
(Our school is rolling in cash for books this year - book room funding, independent reading program funding, home reading program funding, and library funding, for a combined total of more than twenty thousand dollars. We have to spend it all this year, though, so we're all shopping until we drop.)
Well, the books arrived yesterday.
There are nearly forty books for grade 5 social studies, most of which are for Ancient Civilizations. (I have yet to see an author who can make the Canadian Government unit look fun to a ten-year-old. If anyone knows of any, please let me know. There's another three grand to spend in the library.) There are series of books called, "Ancient Greek _______" - six books, including children, homes, religion, food, clothing, etc. There's an equivalent set for Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. There's the month of April, right there - I'll pair them up, have them do a short research project on one book, then the pairs will split up and join people doing the same topic in a different civilization. Those three will do a compare-and-contrast presentation for the class.
I'm going to grab one of the books already on the shelf (there are exactly ten ancient civ books already on library shelves. Ever tried doing a research project with ten books between thirty-three kids?)and do a model project for them - how to write the facts, what constitutes a fact, how to reorganize the facts into categories that work for them, and how to take those facts and write paragraphs with them - topic sentence, body sentences with examples, concluding sentence, they're getting the whole thing. Forget two-day research projects. I WANT this to take at least three weeks, preferably four. And there's another project to follow right after it, using the rest of the new library books.
This is going to be fun. I almost don't want to give up Social Studies for French next year. Almost.
Then again, we're starting "Le Prince Grenouille" right after Easter. That should be loads of fun. I'm limiting it to days we can get into the gym for practice, though. If I can get the gym teacher to agree to take his class for that period outside on a Wednesday, I can get Mondays and WEdnesdays both in the gym doing plays. I'll find filler stuff for the other days - whole-class practice and pronunciation review, probably. No kid in my class will ever get away with pronouncing "grenouille" as "greenoull."
It's the Friday before March Break! Everyone do a dance!!
