Third Grade Library Newsletter
October 9, 2015
It has been a very busy couple weeks! I apologize for not getting a newsletter out the last two weeks but I am trying to figure out the best way to reach more people. In the end I have decided to continue posting it to the library website and sharing the link to this week's newsletter. I love the ability I have to share videos and pictures online so I'm going to give it another try.
This year has been a big change for us in the library since I have so much built in time for technology instruction and practice. It is amazing to me how much we've already been able to do!
Technology News:
The last couple weeks the third graders and I have been recording all the books they have been reading into a list. I told the students that I wanted this information to use in a word cloud. They had no idea what this meant and I was excited to be gathering data to blow their minds with later.
This Tuesday, in the lab I created a word cloud showing the kids how to do this on the large screen. They were fast learners! By the end of the period they were able to create a word cloud themselves, change the orientation of the cloud, the color of the text, turn text features on and off and even used a tilda (~) to ensure that any text added with more than one word was kept together. We used Word Cloud for Kids on abcya.com to create the word clouds and the kids had a great time experimenting with using the tool.
We talked about how we could use this tool in other ways and decided that we would use our library time together on Thursday conducting surveys of our classmates in order to gather data for our word clouds. So on Tuesday the class came, we brainstormed lots of different things we could ask each other and then the kids were off and at it! Some of the things they asked their classmates were: What is your favorite animal, sports team, color, food, pizza topping, etc.
We will work next Tuesday in the lab to create a word cloud (each child will create one of their own) with the data we collected and will be printing these to display at school. Make sure you stop by the library during PLP's to see our displays!
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Brenner
Clear Creek Elementary Library
Email: jennybrenner@ccaschools.org
Website: http://clearcreekelementary.weebly.com/
Location: 230 West Wilson Street, Oxford, IA, United States
Phone: (319)828-4505
Facebook: www.facebook.com/clearcreekelementarylibrary