Saturday, November 30, 2019

An Author Study: Yuyi Morales

First I want to start by saying I haven't blogged nearly enough. Last year, I began my first year as a Creative Literacy teacher, and I just didn't make blogging a priority. Now that I'm into my second year as a Creative Literacy teacher, I'm hoping to blog a lot more. I feel that my experiences and ideas could be helpful. 

I've been participating in the Global Read Aloud for about 5 years now. Last year, was my first year participating as a Creative Literacy Teacher, who sees all the students (preK-2nd) in the school. Last year, I attempted to read the chapter book selection with my second grade classes. It proved to be too cumbersome. I was reading the same book four times, and we didn't get a chance to finish the book. This year I decided that the pictures books for all grades would be much more manageable.

 Yuyi Morales was a great pick for the author study. I started with background on Mexico, immigration, and Spanish as a language. We read One is a Pinata by Roseanne Thong. This was a nice introduction to some Spanish words and Mexican customs. We also read I Pledge Allegiance  by Pat Mora and Libby Martinez. This was an age appropriate way to introduce becoming a citizen.

Included in the author study were the books:

Dreamer
Just a Minute
Nino Wrestles the World
Viva Frida
Little Night

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these books with my students. I especially enjoy listening to the videos of Yuyi reading her own books. In each video Yuyi provided background and meaning to each book. We used flipgrid to connect with a couple other schools. As with past years, the connects start off strong but as the month goes one the connection usually fades. We had a pretty successful connection throughout with a School from Indiana.   

I had the brilliant idea to make pinatas with kindergarten and first grade. Then I decided to make masks with the second grade. I had committed to paper mache with the entire school.

A couple lessons I learned from my adventure with paper mache.

1. Way more kids than I expected DID NOT want to touch the gooey mixture.

2. I went through a lot more flour than I anticipated.

3. Make extras because some not going come right, and quite honestly they won't know the difference between the pinatas.

Looking forward to next year!







  

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