Here you'll find specific details on school-wide themes used at Sterling Grade School in past years. Themes centered on activities in library skills classes, storytimes, p.e., art, and music classes, and our annual week-long Read Across America celebration. Themes described include Hero's Trail (focus on biographies and real-life heroes), the Mississippi River (focus on the river, steamboats, jazz music and Mark Twain), and explorers Lewis & Clark.
Hero's Trail
Program Plan: Walking the Hero's Trail at SGS
Books that inspired the theme and projects:
• The Hero's Trail: a Guide for a Heroic Life by T.A. Barron
• 50 American Heroes Every Kid Should Meet by Dennis Denenberg and Lorraine Roscoe.Library Skills lessons:
Library Skills Lesson
• Book preview -- Musical chairs-style preview of biographies using the song “B-b-b-biography” from Library Songs CD, available from Upstart, $16.95
• Hero's Medal – Think about every day heroes like firefighters, police officers, soldiers, teachers and family members. On the hero's medal award form, write about why this person deserves to be a hero and color and decorate the medal. If possible, give the award to the person you chose.
• Biography Mobile -- Choose a hero, do some brief research, and create a coat hanger mobile that includes at least 3 symbols that show facts about the person's life.
• Diamonte Poem -- Choose a hero, do some research, and create a diamonte poem about that person's life. Type your poem and add clip art or a photo downloaded from the Web. Be sure to list the Web address where you found your picture!
• Hero's Life and Character Traits -- A staff committee chose the list of heroes and corresponding character traits for each month. Older students were asked to do research that told basic facts about the hero, explain the character trait (for example, what is perseverance?), and explain how the hero showed that character trait in everyday life. The idea was that this information would explain the hero and traits to younger students or anyone in the school. I gave students access to a rich text format (rtf) that they used as a template.
• Stamp on History project – Conduct in-depth research on a person, create a postage stamp in that person's honor, and write a persuasive piece explaining why that person deserves to be honored with a postage stamp.
All-School Activities:
• School-Wide Biography Challenge -- We received a $2,275 ILDP grant to purchase new biography books for our library. To promote the new books, and all of our biographies, the library issued a challenge: Could the students of Sterling Grade School read 500 biographies in 3 weeks? We called the program “Cozy up with a good biography,” and the prize for reaching the goal was an all-school pajama day. Older classes buddied with younger classes to read the biographies (Kindy and 4th ; 1st and 6th , 2nd and 5th , 3rd with college reading buddies). We kept a thermometer in the library to track students' progress. We asked teachers to tally the number of biographies read in their classroom and email the numbers to me each Friday. The student response was amazing! Our kids doubled the goal, reading 1,003 biographies! Wow!
• Book preview -- Musical chairs-style preview of biographies using the song “B-b-b-biography” from Library Songs CD, available from Upstart, $16.95
• Hero's Medal – Think about every day heroes like firefighters, police officers, soldiers, teachers and family members. On the hero's medal award form, write about why this person deserves to be a hero and color and decorate the medal. If possible, give the award to the person you chose.
• Biography Mobile -- Choose a hero, do some brief research, and create a coat hanger mobile that includes at least 3 symbols that show facts about the person's life.
• Diamonte Poem -- Choose a hero, do some research, and create a diamonte poem about that person's life. Type your poem and add clip art or a photo downloaded from the Web. Be sure to list the Web address where you found your picture!
• Hero's Life and Character Traits -- A staff committee chose the list of heroes and corresponding character traits for each month. Older students were asked to do research that told basic facts about the hero, explain the character trait (for example, what is perseverance?), and explain how the hero showed that character trait in everyday life. The idea was that this information would explain the hero and traits to younger students or anyone in the school. I gave students access to a rich text format (rtf) that they used as a template.
• Stamp on History project – Conduct in-depth research on a person, create a postage stamp in that person's honor, and write a persuasive piece explaining why that person deserves to be honored with a postage stamp.
All-School Activities:
• School-Wide Biography Challenge -- We received a $2,275 ILDP grant to purchase new biography books for our library. To promote the new books, and all of our biographies, the library issued a challenge: Could the students of Sterling Grade School read 500 biographies in 3 weeks? We called the program “Cozy up with a good biography,” and the prize for reaching the goal was an all-school pajama day. Older classes buddied with younger classes to read the biographies (Kindy and 4th ; 1st and 6th , 2nd and 5th , 3rd with college reading buddies). We kept a thermometer in the library to track students' progress. We asked teachers to tally the number of biographies read in their classroom and email the numbers to me each Friday. The student response was amazing! Our kids doubled the goal, reading 1,003 biographies! Wow!
Our 6th grade teachers had a great, simple idea to track the biographies read by their students. They cut out a big stack of stars from different colored construction paper using the school's die cut machine. Then every time the 6th graders read a biography, they got a star, wrote the name of the person the book was about, and stuck the star to their locker. It was a fun, easy way to keep track of the biographies read, and it was very impressive looking down the hallway!
• Read Across America week-long celebration, “Saddle Up and Read". Because March's heroes of the month were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, we used a cowboy theme for Read Across America this year. Our school always goes “all-out” for this event, and this year we had a wonderful variety of activities.
• Read Across America week-long celebration, “Saddle Up and Read". Because March's heroes of the month were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, we used a cowboy theme for Read Across America this year. Our school always goes “all-out” for this event, and this year we had a wonderful variety of activities.
Mississippi River
We chose our theme with the idea that we would be learning about the Mississippi River, which flows down to New Orleans and the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, which would give our students a chance to learn about this area and also do their part to help with relief efforts. Our goal was to find a sister school to correspond with and send donations to, but several attempts to get in contact with a school failed. We were able to donate school supplies and money to a church charity that could distribute them where needed. The p.e. walking program used the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans as their route for our “Walking the Mississippi ” theme.
We chose our theme with the idea that we would be learning about the Mississippi River, which flows down to New Orleans and the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, which would give our students a chance to learn about this area and also do their part to help with relief efforts. Our goal was to find a sister school to correspond with and send donations to, but several attempts to get in contact with a school failed. We were able to donate school supplies and money to a church charity that could distribute them where needed. The p.e. walking program used the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans as their route for our “Walking the Mississippi ” theme.
Library skills lessons:
Art & music:
Art students produced various projects involving jazz, musical notes and instruments. Third graders created 3-D steamboats. Music students listened to, studied and sang some jazz.
Read Across America -- Read about our "River of Readers" week of events.
- “River of Writers” – 5th graders researched famous authors and wrote riddles depicting facts about the author and inviting you to guess each author being described.
- “Postcards from the Journey” – 4th graders imagined themselves walking the banks of the Mississippi River and did research on places and things they encountered along the way. Facts from their research were presented in the form of a postcard home telling friends and family what was “seen” on their journey.
- Tall Tales – Grades 1-3 participated in activities centered around tall tale characters Mike Fink, Sal Fink and Annie Christmas, legendary figures who traveled the Mississippi River . Resources: Mike Fink: a Tall Tale by Steven Kellogg and Teaching Tall Tales by Tracey West (Scholastic Professional Books).
- Reading Promotion -- Lower elementary students chose and discussed which books they were “jazzed” about reading and filled out and colored a “jazzed about reading” form.
- Reading Chants & Songs – Students in every grade learned a different reading chant or song to perform at the Read Across America “Jazzed About Reading” rally.
*Library songs
*R-E-A-D song lyrics (sung to the tune of YMCA) -- http://www.teachingheart.net/ymcaread.html - Storytimes featured steamboats, other regional topics, and a special visit from the high school vocal jazz singing group.
Art & music:
Art students produced various projects involving jazz, musical notes and instruments. Third graders created 3-D steamboats. Music students listened to, studied and sang some jazz.
Read Across America -- Read about our "River of Readers" week of events.
Highlights of this week-long celebration included a buffet of Louisiana cuisine prepared by one of our special ed teachers who is also a caterer. She had an amazing menu: jambalaya, red beans and rice, collard greens, King's cake, pralines, fruit smoothies, sweet potato pie. She talked to the kids about nutrition and the food groups involved in each dish.
Our other big event was the reading rally, which included special guest speakers Mark Twain and his character Huck Finn, portrayed by a very talented local man and a college drama student. Their costumes were amazing, and the kids were spellbound as Mr. Twain told about his life, his writing, his character Huck Finn, and the importance of reading. Every class grades K-6 performed a chant or song learned in library skills class that promoted reading. One teacher commented it was the best school assembly they'd had in her 20+ years in the building.
Our other big event was the reading rally, which included special guest speakers Mark Twain and his character Huck Finn, portrayed by a very talented local man and a college drama student. Their costumes were amazing, and the kids were spellbound as Mr. Twain told about his life, his writing, his character Huck Finn, and the importance of reading. Every class grades K-6 performed a chant or song learned in library skills class that promoted reading. One teacher commented it was the best school assembly they'd had in her 20+ years in the building.
Lewis and Clark
In 2004-2005, our p.e. teacher and school counselor wrote and received a Coordinated School Health Grant. When they invited me to be part of the program and carry out the Lewis & Clark theme in the library, I was excited at the opportunity to partner with them, and our school-wide theme program was born.
Through grant funds they were able to purchase pedometers for students and launched the school walking program. The p.e. teacher posted a map of the Lewis & Clark trail on the gym bulletin board. During the warm months of the year in fall and spring, teachers were encouraged to take their students outside walking sometime during the school day wearing their pedometers to keep track of miles. Classroom teachers emailed their miles to the p.e. teacher, who charted the school's progress. The goal was to make it to Oregon on the map so we could make “winter camp” just like Lewis & Clark did. During “winter camp” time when it was too cold to walk, we did library skills lessons and story times related to Lewis & Clark. We also used the Kansas Read Week theme that year – Explore New Trails: READ! – for our Read Across America theme. Then in the spring, the walking program began again so the students could walk the trail back from Oregon.
Lewis & Clark library skills lessons
Kansas R.E.A.D. Week (Read Across America ) Celebration
Guidelines for R.E.A.D. Week
Through grant funds they were able to purchase pedometers for students and launched the school walking program. The p.e. teacher posted a map of the Lewis & Clark trail on the gym bulletin board. During the warm months of the year in fall and spring, teachers were encouraged to take their students outside walking sometime during the school day wearing their pedometers to keep track of miles. Classroom teachers emailed their miles to the p.e. teacher, who charted the school's progress. The goal was to make it to Oregon on the map so we could make “winter camp” just like Lewis & Clark did. During “winter camp” time when it was too cold to walk, we did library skills lessons and story times related to Lewis & Clark. We also used the Kansas Read Week theme that year – Explore New Trails: READ! – for our Read Across America theme. Then in the spring, the walking program began again so the students could walk the trail back from Oregon.
Lewis & Clark library skills lessons
Kansas R.E.A.D. Week (Read Across America ) Celebration
Guidelines for R.E.A.D. Week
