Library Lessons

This weeks lessons had to revamped.  My orginal plan was to read some Valentine's Day poems to 3rd-5th grade.  I had read the poems and had marked which poems I wanted to read to them.  But when I read them to the first class the poems did not roll off my tongue.                                                                                                                                          Side note: I learned a valuable lesson here.  I had read the poems before hand to myself but I did not practice reading them out loud.  That would of made a huge different!  I'll practice reading them out loud from now on.                                                                                                                               The book of poetry was copyrighted 1976, the same year I was born... 39 years old (which turned into a math lesson).  Not that that makes it a bad book but by the blank, bored out of my mind stares I got I decided it wasn't relevant to them anymore.  Plus with fumbling the words so much... anyone would of been bored.  After we trudged through 6 poems I said, "I'm guessing by the looks on your faces you did not like this book."  I got a chores of "NO!" and head shakes.  So I learned my lesson and decided to read the same book to the older kids as I was to the little kids.  

And they loved it!  I read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose! by Lucille Colandro.

I know that big kids like to hear little kid books too.  I know that.  But I forget sometimes.  This book was a hit for everyone.  I got all kinds of reactions from the little kids exclaiming things like "She's gonna be so fat!" to the big kids questioning "I wonder if the thorns hurt going down?" which was something I had never thought about.

After I read the book I used print outs I got from Crazy Speech World to do an activity.  As a group we ordered the items the old lady ate.  If there was a disagreement on what went next I had them old up the first little of the item in sign language they thought was next then I'd check the book (cuz I can barely remember the order myself!).  We had to have a little discussion about sportsmanship when the right students were right.                                                                                                                                          If I do this lesson again I think I'll print more of the activities and put students into groups then we can share our activity when we're done.  I have students for 45 minutes.  I usually like to spend 10-20 minutes reading and doing an activity then do check out and stations.  In my head this book and activity was going to take longer than it did. We could of easily done more activities.

I really enjoyed reading this book and doing the activity with the students!