Our 3rd - 5th grade Comets had a fantastic visit from Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee and New York Times bestselling author, Liesl Shurtliff. Many of our students have enjoyed Mrs. Shurtliff's books, Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin, Jack: The True Story of Jack and the Beanstalk, and Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood. In addition to information about her writing process and how she gets ideas, Mrs. Shurtliff also pulled some of our students up to do a Readers Theater based on Rumpelstiltskin. She also stayed afterwards to sign books that students purchased. We can't wait for her new book due out next year!
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Our 5th Grade Poetry is in Antarctica!
Mrs. Hance, the Grisham librarian and a good friend and mentor of mine, is ONE of SIX educators in North America chosen to travel to Antarctica as a 2016 Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow! She left on Tuesday, December 27th for her two-week trip aboard the National Geographic Explorer carrying a book of poetry written by Canyon Creek 5th graders with her. Our fifth graders will be her sixth graders next year, so I invited Mrs. Hance to work with our students partly for them to learn from her experiences and partly to begin building middle school relationships. Transitioning to middle school can be rough! After a quick meeting with Diane and our awesome 5th grade teachers, we decided to collaborate on a project. It was time for their poetry unit, so the students researched and wrote poetry about all aspects of Mrs. Hance's trip from wildlife to weather to glacier movement to the ship itself. After the students illustrated their poems, the teachers included them in a photo album with the first name and yearbook picture of each student. Also included was a guest "book" for any of the crew, naturalists, researchers, or guests to sign if they read it as well as a little blue comet that Ms. Owen, our ITS, made with a 3D printer (our "Flat Stanley" ;). The result was breathtaking. The talent, heart, and hard work that the CCE students put into those beautifully crafted poems literally brought tears to Mrs. Hance's eyes (and mine) as she read through the finished product. As her schedule allows, she will try to photograph poems with their concrete subjects, record readings or the poems, or include them on her blog (www.teacheradventures.com) as the spotty connection allows. We are planning a presentation to the 5th graders when she returns. The Daily Expedition Reports from the ship can be followed here. Wishing Mrs. Hance an incredible trip and professional learning experience! Thank you so much for your support of our book fair! We had a very successful fair. In addition to personal reading material, OVER 130 BOOKS were donated as gifts to teachers for use in their classrooms. The generosity of our Canyon Creek families is astounding. Funds raised will help with:
Thank you, thank you!!! If the book fair is missing your favorite title,
NEVER FEAR! You can shop online by clicking HERE! Thanks for supporting our library <3 Support through the book fair brings great programs and more books to our library and students. Money raised from our book fairs enables us to present students with their first books from CCE in Kindergarten and their last books in 5th grade. We are also able to bring programs such as a storyteller for K-2nd right before Thanksgiving and an author visit with Bluebonnet nominated author, Liesl Shurtliff (Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin) in February. Thank you for your support in our goal to get kids reading!
Book fair hours and times: TUESDAY, Nov. 8, 7:20 am- 7:30 pm (LATE NIGHT)
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 9, 7:20 am -3:30 pm THURSDAY, Nov. 10, 7:20 am – 3:30 pm FRIDAY (LAST DAY), Nov. 11, 7:20 am – CLOSES AT NOON Mrs. Montgomery's 5th graders were generous with their time on Wednesday! We so appreciate that they moved all of our chairs for book fair!!
From our counselor, Mrs. McCall:
Our character word for November is GENEROSITY!! We celebrate Thanksgiving in November and the last half of that word is GIVING. Being generous or "giving" means that you give your time, your kindness, or your possessions to other people without expecting anything in return. You do this because you enjoy giving to others.
Our GENEROUS Canyon Creek Comets donated coins for the Library Services Coins for Coats fund raiser live on our KCCE morning broadcast. These donations will go towards providing coats for students in our district who can't afford them.WAY TO GO COMETS!
We had a FANTASTIC first Family Create Night last night! Parents, students, and siblings worked together to create some great projects. In addition to the masks, maracas, paintings, and embroidery in the cafeteria, we had a technology component in the library. Assembly App and Beat Boxing with IncrediboxStudents had a blast using www.incredibox.com to create different sounds and beat boxing groups. We had the website on our Boxlight interactive, touch-screen monitor. Parents and siblings even jumped in to try it out. Families worked with the Assembly app on iPads. Assembly provides pre-made stickers and shapes to create images. Some of the differentiated challenges we gave students included using shapes to build their own landscapes (advanced), stickers (intermediate), and emoticons (beginner). They could also try recreate some of the pre-made stickers (all levels). These projects supported educational goals for students in shape identification, spatial reasoning, graphic design, and more. Here are some samples: Assembly ProjectsCreate Night Family Pics
The Canyon Creek Library is so proud of how well our Comets have been treating their books so far this year! Our character word for September is RESPONSIBILITY!! Responsibility means that you do what you are supposed to do, without being asked. In the library, that means you keep your library books safe and treat them well. These library books are my friends, and I LOVE to see students taking good care of them. Thank you, students, for being so responsible!
Here is a short presentation about book care at home: Hello students, families, and community members,
I am so excited to take on the librarian position at Canyon Creek Elementary! I am a Westwood graduate, and I taught Language Arts at Grisham for five years (probably including some of your siblings or children). For the past three years, I've been the librarian at Berkman Elementary in RRISD. It was a great place, but I am so excited to back in the WHS feeder pattern (and my neck of the woods). We are going to have an exciting year as a NextGen digital library! Of course, we will read tons of books, but we will also have several enrichment and TEKS-centered lessons about our stories with the new technology. Our library will have:
Please check this new website for information and updates. You can also follow us on Twitter @CCEReads I'm really looking forward to meeting our Canyon Creek students and families. Come by and see me in the library! Mrs. Bamford, Librarian |
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