Our Author Visit with Lesley Etherly!

Yes, thats a movie camera set up- yesterday was one of our best days EVER in room 108! We were the first kids ever at Graham to get a personal visit from a Chicago children’s book author, the one and only Lesley Etherly! You may recognize the name, we have been using her book, Baxter the Bully and Maxine the Meanie as part of our anti bullying reading buddies program. Mrs. B and Mrs. E also happen to be good friends and have known each other since Columbia College! We got to have donuts and pastries from our fantastic local bakery as we introduced each other and had a sit down Q and A session with Mrs. E!  Here are some shots of this ( we will tell you about the movie camera in a bit!) 

 

Mrs Etherly explaining how she got her ideas and inspiration for her books! ( Her own daughters and wanting to teach them social skills at a young age!) We loved getting to here about her family and life!

Renell asking her questions! D.J. and Danny listening-

We got to ask her all about the creative process as well- here are some shots of us discussing the writing process and how you can put your ideas to work for you!

 

After we talked to was time to get  down to business!!! Mrs. E brought her recording equipment in and filmed us reading her books. Each one of us read 2 lines from each book and she is going to cut and loop it together so it looks like a continuous movie! We are hoping to use this video footage to get these amazing books into CPS! We are also all getting copies of it and keeping it for our digital memory collection! Special thanks to DeJuan who was an awesome sound tech! 

Here is photos of the equipment! Mrs. Etherly’s hushand is a film maker so they have GORGEOUS equipment, We transformed our room into a set! It was so cool making a movie in our room! 

 

 

Sweet , right?!?

Here we are setting up the room

We also learned that the mic was super high tech and picked up the smallest of sounds so we learned the term “Quiet on set”

Here we are waiting to read and watching our peers get filmed! 

Here we are hard at work creating the collaborative reading film! 

This was such an amazing experience to get to film with the author who wrote the books we have been using!!!! After filming we were interviewed about bullies in our life. We also took a photo of each of us with Mrs. Etherly!

After lunch our third grade buddies came down to meet Mrs. E and she read us her books- this was fun!!!! Check out how much fun our buddies had- BTW they asked even BETTER questions than we did 🙂

 

 

 

We loved our visit with this very special person- it is days like this that makes us want to reach out and increase our plan to help others! Thank you for everything Lesley Etherly! 

Close Reading with John Lennon and Our Buddies Teach Us a Lesson!

We have so many amazing things going on that we are going to be doing 2 or 3 updates this week!

First off we have been faithfully implementing the “close read” strategy in our room. Close Read teaches you to think more critically about what you read. We love it!!! In order to spice things up Mrs. B uses a lot of songs for this strategy. To date we have been using current songs and rap but since we have been focused on pro-social behavior and anti-bullying we used one of Mrs. B’s favorite songs, Imagine by John Lennon- here are some shots of this!

After analyzing the song using annotation and discussion we decided that this short song packed a HUGE message. Here are some shots of us “picking apart” the lyrics ( above)

This week we worked hard planning our lesson plan for session 3 of our “Anti Bullying Reading buddies” – We are taking this very seriously and set up a lesson plan book like Mrs. B!

We based this week’s lesson off of Aesop’s Fable- “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. This week we decided to switch it up by making board games based off the game “Shoots and Ladders” Here are some shots of us working on our “Honesty Game of Snakes and Ladders”

So we got up to the room and guess what? Our buddies had a surprise for us!!!! They designed a lesson for us- we got to learn how to make friendship bracelets! We were more than happy to hold off on our plan and learn how to make the bracelets!!! Our buddies taught us the weaving technique – it was harder than it looked!!!! Our buddies were amazing teachers- here are some shots of us in action!

We had the BEST week and can’t wait to tell you about our special guest- until next time- peace!!!

Christmas in March- Our New Camera Came!!!!!!

We HAD to stop by and let you know that our new camera and camera equipment came today!!!! Thank you to the kind and amazing folks that make up donors choose- again you can find them at http://www.donorschoose.org. Please check out the amazing projects teachers all over the country have posted! 

We almost cried when our box came! It was like Christmas in March! Here is a shot of the big moment!!!

We got really nervous because the outer box looked like it had been to war!!!! Luckily our equipment was unhurt! Here is shot of some of us opening up the box. 

We were SO HAPPY!!!!!! What was even cooler was that the bundle package that came with the camera had TONS of extras!!!!! We have everything we need to take it out of the box and shoot!!!! This week Mrs. B will be giving us lessons and then – watch out world!!!! We now have a camera again ( an amazing professional grade one) and a video camera- stay tuned for more!!!

Our help in helping bring “Baxter and Maxine to CPS” – A mission!!!!

Hi everyone!!! We are on to BIG things in room 108!!!! This week we have been rocking the ISAT test and EVERYONE has been present and came on time. Tomorrow we are going to celebrate in style 🙂 Meanwhile………..

We are in absolute love with Lesley Etherly’s books, Baxter the Bully and Maxine the Meanie. They are fantastic books that are accessible to readers of all levels, have enriching vocabulary, a pro-social  message and there is even a glossary of terms and processing sheet in the back! Perfect teaching tools books, plus it doesn’t hurt that the illustrations are STUNNING!!!! They use color and shading to capture even the most reluctant reader! Our third grade buddies adore them as much as we do! We want Mrs. Etherly to hurry up and write more! We have really enjoyed writing our ” Banish Bullying through Education” curriculum using these books as our anchor texts. We are noticing HUGE changes with our own behavior and attitudes in school as well as our third grade buddies since we started our visits 🙂 We love teaching and reaching out and would love for others to be able to do the same. Mrs. Etherly also has her own publishing house called Inkspil books- you can check them out at inkspil.com! Since Mrs. B and Mrs. E have been friends since college we get the AMAZING opportunity to have her come visit us on March 17th!!!! We are super excited and can’t wait.! Mrs. Etherly also has a background in community activism and grass roots movements, one of the projects she is working on is getting her books into Chicago Public Schools! We fully support her and feel there is a serious need for books with an anti bullying  message. 

We have worked with Mrs. B for three years to realize, through art and social skill instruction, that change only and must come from within. There are a lot of people who spew jargon about how you erase bullying at schools, but sometimes the only way to make -and see progress- is to get down to the bare issues, be real with yourself , and say the uncomfortable truth-change only happens through hard work, persistence, and modeling the change you want to see in others. This is especially true with youth. You can package programs and make them look fancy ( and expensive) but they are only as good as the paper they are printed on if no one believes in the message and “walks the walk”. Kids learn best by being taught by other kids! Yes- we know this sounds crazy and counterintuitive but it’s true. Sometimes an adult can say something 100 times and you don’t get it but your friend tells you and you do! We are social creatures and rely on this in order to survive. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day”TEACH A MAN TO FISH AND YOU FEED HIM FOR A LIFETIME.” You can give someone the tools to behave- but if they don’t practice them and know how to use them – you are only giving them a “quick fix”. If you teach them and show them how to apply these tools ( and why this is important) – this is how you change your community. 

Thinking about your thinking (Metacognition) is important! This applies to teaching others to not bully! This is why we are on this mission- if we had learned this at a younger age we could have saved ourselves a lot of heartache. We also feel that you need to leave the world a better place than how you found it- no matter what! This is why we will help work to bring these awesome books to Chicago Public Schools, EVERY CHILD NEEDS ANOTHER CHILD TO HELP THEM ERASE BULLYING!!!!! 

From a ‘meanie’ to a ‘sweetie’ and Donors Choose us!!!!!

This week some of our buddies let us know that some bullying was still occurring in the 3rd and 4th grades. We decided that we really needed to get a plan together to address this sooner than later! We choose the book ‘Maxine the Meanie’ by our favorite author – Lesley Etherly! This week we started our planning by talking about what was awesome about our last session and what we wanted to tweak to keep making Reading Buddies better. We loved the projects and decided that this week we would break into groups after reading the book and make and perform a play . We decided that our friends love art so we also planned to make an ABS book of kindness. We worked all week to make our play ‘Turning from a meanie to a sweetie’ Special shout out to Fabian for publishing the play! Here is a shot of us practicing 

We choose the students who showed the BEST behavior during last week’s session! 

 

We started our session out by reviewing the skills we worked on last week- Fabian also talked to our buddies about how they feel they are being treated. Many of us reported having a great week and some us wanted to work some more on our kindness skills. Then we read the book – here is a shot of that!

Check out the AMAZING listening skills our buddies have! As usual Mrs. Etherley’s books do not disappoint- they are fantastic and have some of the most STUNNING illustrations! Kids of all ages adore these books.

After the book we discussed it’s message and then it was GO TIME!!!! Our very first play!!!! Here are some shots of us performing for the group- we were nervous but aced the play! We think we need to write more 🙂

 

We got a standing ovation! After the play we introduced our next activity- the ABC Book of Kindness- every one of use took a group of 3-5 third graders and and we choose a letter of the alphabet . We had to create a kindness sentence that fits with the letter we choose. It was not easy but turned out so GREAT!!!!! Our buddies loved the group set up and going into the hall to work! Here are some shots of us hard at work! 

 

You might be noticing the great photos we have been getting – we do not have a camera of our own- our Assistant Principal has been nice enough to loan us his personal camera since Mrs. B’s is broken. We really need a camera of our own since we take pictures often – some teachers that Mrs. B knows suggested we write a proposal for a grant for a camera on this great site called Donors Choose. You can find them at http://www.donorschoose.org. Mrs. B worked with us over 2 lunch periods and she read us what she wrote- we agreed with it and submitted our request. It got approved!!!! What is even better is that 100 Women in Hedge Funds sponsored us and decided to match donations dollar for dollar. In 24 hours we were fully funded by 5 donors and got our camera!!!!! It was an amazing and heart warming experience – the world is full of generous and kind strangers. We are making out thank you notes now- here are some shots of our page and our AWESOME sponsor! 

 

Soon we will have our very own class camera!!!! We are also working on one more request in order to get the art supplies needed to make  anti-bullying murals with our buddies. We have already contacted the police station and library and they would love to house the finished works!!!! We are on a mission here in our room!!!!! Until next time- PAY IT FORWARD!!!!