Inspiring students and teachers all day long, Jarrett J. Krosoczka spent Monday, April 28 with us at Korn and Brewster Elementary Schools. The students were psyched! I haven't seen a Lunch Lady book in either school in months. The waiting lists are long. We couldn't wait!

Jarrett arrived early and was ready to meet our kindergarteners! I loved how he played music as the students were coming in and they settled right down. He shared with them about becoming a writer - how he had been writing since he was a little boy. They loved learning about his newly released Peanut Butter and Jellyfish and were thrilled when he read it to them. They also LOVED when Jarrett did some drawing with them! It was so much fun to have sea creatures have different emotions!

From Brewster, we traveled over to Korn School where Jarrett shared about his author journey with the 3rd and 4th graders. They were very attentive as he talked with them about becoming a published author (it took a while!) and the inspiration for the Lunch Lady series. They asked question after question of him too! They were very disappointed to find out that the Lunch Lady series is finished for the time being. Excitement grew when he talked about the upcoming book, Comics Squad Recess! written with some of the best graphic novelists in the business and showed them the book trailer! We can't wait til July!

Back to Brewster for lunch and then presentations to the 1st and 2nd graders. They loved seeing how Baghead came to be too! It was wonderful to hear from teachers about how much they really enjoyed his presentations and thought that he did an excellent job talking to the students. Jarrett's message about writing and drawing every day was perfect for our Young Author's Day!

After each presentation, Jarrett was able to sign books for students who had purchased them, providing them with a special momento from a very special day.  

Visit Jarrett J. Krosoczka at: studiojjk.com

Want a great way to catch 3rd graders attention in May? Start with a picture and a mystery. Get a suitcase and take out one item at a time and have them try to figure out what Jim Arnosky does for an occupation. A photograph, a date, a notebook, paint and paintbrush, a videotape of an animal safari, an award and finally a book. Amazingly enough, every year it takes them until the very end to figure it out, even though we are in the library! From the book Nonfiction Author Studies in the Elementary Classroom by Jenkins and White, this begins a series of lessons that incorporate exploration of this amazing author/illustrator with a myriad of language arts standards. Inferencing, skimming, noticing, looking for patterns are just a few of the things students will be doing. 

Arnosky is a prolific writer with topics like fish, lions, frogs, birds of prey, dolphins and more. These topics are intriguing to kids and over and over I heard, "Cool!" and "Awesome!" and "Look at this!" Students went through a book speed-dating process, looking at books from their pile for 1 minute and then choosing another one. It is chaotic and so much fun! While looking through these books, students have been asked, "What do they notice?" and "What patterns do you see?" They take 3 minutes or so at the end to record their thoughts. 

At this point, they are so curious about Jim Arnosky's life and have lots of questions. We will be using our next library class to learn more about his life and connect it to his writing. 

My favorite part? "Mrs. Lussier, can I take this book home?" I love when they are hooked!

Last week we kicked off celebrating the Charter Oak Children's Book Award, a children's book award for students in grades K-3. We read two books last week, Cows to the Rescue by local author John Himmelman and Randy Riley's Really Big Hit by Chris Van Dusen. What fun! 

Students on Friday began creating robots out of paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and anything else they could come up with. I had been playing around with Chatterpix for Kids for the iPad (FREE!) and all of a sudden I thought, "How fun would that be?!" Chatterpix allows you to take a picture of a person or drawing and then draw a line where the mouth would be and record. When you play it, it looks like the mouth is really moving! So much fun! There is more to it of course, but that gets you started. 

I asked the kids to record something about Randy Riley's Really Big Hit. Maybe it was their favorite part, maybe it is what they thought about the book. Below are a few that were finished today.