Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Monarch 2018 Nominee: I'm Trying to Love Spiders




Barton, Bethany. I'm Trying to Love Spiders: (it Isn't Easy). New York, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), 2015.

I'm Trying to Love Spiders is one of the nominees for the Monarch Award this year.



To continue our learning about the Monarch Awards, I read it to my 2nd group students, and had a great time learning the story with the kids. I also want to encourage them to read for pleasure, so the first time, we simply read the story and talked about it.

The next library class, I asked students to retell the story, and explained that we were going to research different types of spiders. I had pulled about 15 books on spiders and put 2 or 3 at each table. After reading and explaining each part of the report form, I gave each student a report form and let them look through the books and find facts. Of course, one book was probably not enough to find all the facts they needed! So the following week, we discussed sources.

On the board, I had the following questions:
What is a source?
Is the iPad a source?
Is google.com?

We discussed each and then we searched in our  subscribed databases, GoGrolier and DK Find Out to try and find the missing facts. We also then discussed that sometimes I can't find it in the source, and I need to go find others. The discussion and subsequent research was so interesting!

I am thinking about reading Give Bees a Chance, also by Bethany Barton, along with Thank You Bees to start some November Thankful activities!