Non-fiction means true!

The Shannon students have been reading the books on the nomination list for Iowa Goldfinch Award booklist. In March they will vote for their favorite book that we have read so far this year and those votes will be added with other elementary kids from around Iowa to determine which book will win the Goldfinch Award for 2016-2017.

This week one of the books we read and focused on was Ivan the Remarkable Shopping Mall Gorilla. This book talks about the gorilla named Ivan that was purchased and lived in a shopping mall for a long time before being moved to a zoo. Students learned that some books tell us true facts and sometimes have some real photos included in the book.

After learning about nonfiction books we also discussed that we can look at magazines to find out more true facts. Students explored a variety of magazines that we have in the library and were able to see that many of them gave us pictures and information about a variety of animals.

Zoobook magazines shares lots of animal facts and pictures for the kids.

Jorja, Nevaeh, and Isla look at the National Geographic for Kids magazine. 

Maddox and Connor learn about Ranger Rick Magazine

Hour of Code

The Carpenter students participated in Hour of Code this week. Hour of Code is a nationwide movement to get students to code for an hour sometime throughout the week to give them experience learning how to code. Library class this week was 60 minutes instead of 40, students go to choose from a variety of coding games to work on during the hour. Some games included Minecraft, Disney's Moana movie, Frozen, star wars, and Angry Birds. To learn more about the Hour of Code please visit: https://hourofcode.com/us
To complete some of the coding activities click on Activities on the top of that website.

Adamari works on coding.

Karli is working on Disney's Moana coding.

         

Ethan enjoys working on Minecraft coding.

QR Codes and Coding

This week in library class the kindergarten and first grade students learned how to scan a QR code. They scanned a variety of QR codes that linked them to videos of people reading them stories. Students learned how to scan the code and watched the person reading them a story. They will be using these codes in their classroom for listen to reading centers.

  

The 2nd-4th grade students this week worked on reviewing how to use the coding website. The students have accounts on code.org and are working through each step of the course they are on. They started code.org in 1st grade and have done it each year as they get further and further into their course. All 2-4th grade students will be participating in Hour of Code next week with others around the world.