Where Did September Go?

It's already October.  I feel like I totally missed all of September.  It is such a blur.  I had to leave during the end of August, right before the start of our book fair for a family emergency.  I had to leave so quickly, I didn't even get a picture of the final set up before the fair started. However, I felt very blessed to have some wonderful co-workers and some great volunteers who ran the fair while I was out.   I was out for 6 days and it seems like it took me forever to get back to a routine.

Just as I thought I was about to catch up, the annual West Georgia RESA Technology Conference was upon me and I was out another two days with that.  It was a good conference.  I got to talk with my friend Shannon Miller and I even won a Keurig, although I don't drink coffee. But it's all good because the hubs does drink coffee and his birthday is coming up.

So I thought my luck was changing, but the next week I got two flat tires...in less than 12 hours!  But PTO brought cupcakes that day (my favorite!) and I got an email confirmation that I am registered for my favorite tech conference in November. That made the situation a little less stressful.

The awful back luck continued last week when a nasty viral infection struck me down on Tuesday afternoon. Hard.  I started feeling bad and within an hour I was down for the count.  Although it wasn't the flu, I can't imagine that the flu would have felt much worse.  Everything hurt and then came the sore throat, runny nose, cough, nausea.  I was a walking bedridden Nyquil commercial. I am starting to feel better today, which is good because I really do not need to miss any more work.

In between all the bad luck, I did manage to teach some classes including

Kindergarten and First Grade First Checkouts of the Year

Second Grade Library Centers

You can purchase a copy of the library centers I use HERE in my TpT store.

Third Grade Dictionary Skills

You can read about the Dictionary Dudes and download a free copy HERE.

Fourth and Fifth Grade Fiction Book Hunt with Aurasma

You can read more about the Aurasma book hunt HERE.
NOTE:  Aurasma is now HP Reveal. 

Fourth Grade Non-fiction QR Code Hunt

You can read more about the QR Code Dewey Hunt HERE.

So that was my September.  I really hope that October is less eventful.

Dictionary Skills

This year I am trying to cover a different information literacy skill each month for second through fifth grade.   September's Media lessons focused on dictionary skills.

There are tons of lesson ideas for teaching dictionary skills, but I wanted something fun and new so I did some searching and found this cute idea for younger grades.  It would be a bit time consuming for my second and third grade classes to cut out all of the pieces, so I created a one page sheet and called it a Dictionary Dude.

I made two different versions, one for second grade that didn't have as much on it and one for third grade that was a little more involved.

Both grade levels seemed to enjoy it. I also made a third version in case I ever want to use it with fourth and fifth grade.  It might be a bit juvenile for them, but I might could use it with the gifted second and third graders.

With fourth and fifth grades, I knew I would have to come up with something more fun than just a worksheet, so after talking with my husband who is a former fifth grade teacher, I decided to do a "Dictionary Relay."

I broke classes up into 5 teams and each team had to answer 10 questions about a word from the dictionary. They all had the same word, but I didn't tell the teams that.

I had the teams all line up at one end of the table and the question/answer sheet and dictionary was at the other end of the table.  When I said "GO!"  the first team member walked to the end of the table where the dictionary and question/answer sheet was and answered the first question. When finished, they walked back to the other end of the table and tagged the next person to answer the next question.

I gave the teams 10 minutes max to answer all the questions and when they were finished, they had to hand me their completed answer sheet.  The first team to hand in their sheet with ALL the correct answers, won a prize. If they had any incorrect answers, they could work as a team to correct them, but they would receive a 30 second time penalty when they turned in their answer sheet.  If any other team turned in their answer sheet before that time penalty was up and had all the correct answers, they would win.  I also let teams know there would be a 30 second time penalty if they got loud.  We were in the library after all.  It was amazingly quiet after that, but they were still having so much fun...looking up information in the dictionary!  One student even exclaimed "You're the best Media Specialist ever!"  That really made my day.  =)

I am going to try this relay with third grade next week since fourth and fifth grade enjoyed it so much, but I will only give them 5 questions since they are still learning to be proficient with a dictionary.

If you'd like a copy of the "Dictionary Dude" or "Dictionary Relay" you can get them HERE or by clicking on the picture above.

Do you have any fun lessons about dictionary skills?