I began an exciting adventure this school year: a dual role as the library media specialist and the digital learning coach for my elementary campus. I love that I have this opportunity to combine two of my favorite things, books and technology. So here you will find the story of Ogg Library integrating technology, enjoying great literature, and developing life-long learners.
As you may know, we had a hurricane and flooding along the Gulf Coast of Texas just after school started this year, so I am jumping to October. We started the month off with an author visit. H. J. Ralles, author of The Ghosts of Malhado, The Ghosts of Orozimbo, and The Keeper series (science fiction), came for her annual visit to T. W. Ogg Elementary School. She taught our third graders about personal narrative writing and our fourth graders about expository writing. The students engaged in a hands-on writing workshop where they learned techniques to improve their writing. For our third graders she also presented her new book Come Travel With Me, which demonstrates her personal narrative writing; and for our fourth graders she did a presentation of her research on Cabeza de Vaca, which was used to write The Ghosts of Malhaldo.
H. J. Ralles helps students with their prewriting.
H. J. Ralles teaches the students how she comes up with ideas for her books.
Students are working on their personal narrative prewriting activity.
Mr. Salazar helps his students find magazine clippings for their expository writing project.
Mrs. Sciba walks her students through finding a catchy title.
Next we participated in Digital Citizenship Week. Thanks to resources in BrainPop, ABCya, and Common Sense Media, I taught my students what it means to be a good digital citizen and how to stay safe online. Then I had my first and second graders record videos of what it means to be a good digital citizen using FlipGrid. My students accessed the grid by a link I posted in Google Classroom. We recorded a few videos at a time to cut down on background noise. You can get a free FlipGrid One account where you get one grid and can post unlimited topics. If you want more grids, you can upgrade for a price to FlipGrid Classroom. You can download the app from the App Store or Google Play, or you can access it via the web at https://info.flipgrid.com/. I love this tool for giving my students voice.
My 3rd and 4th graders extended their learning about digital citizenship by playing Google's Interland-Be Internet Awesome. Here is a description from Google: "Interland is a free, web-based game that makes learning the ways of the web a fun, engaging and hands-on experience. Kids are invited to play their way to Internet Awesome and become fearless explorers of the online world in a quest to deny hackers, sink phishers, one-up cyberbullies and outsmart oversharers." My students were engaged in learning about internet safety and had fun, too.
One of my favorite October activities is our annual Star Wars Reads event. We had the Brazosport Astronomy Club come again this year with their huge telescopes for some amazing star gazing. We were able to see the Summer Triangle which includes the stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair; and we got a good look at Saturn. And let's not forget the Star Wars fun: marshmallow robot creation station, lightsaber station, Star Wars coloring pages station, Lego space station building station, and origami station. We had a blast creating, building, playing, and star gazing!
So this is how the Ogg Library has started the 2017-2018 school year. The adventures have just begun. Tune in later for more Books and Bytes in the Ogg Library.
