Reflecting on our Learning from the Global Read Aloud Project

CR's beautiful drawings of the 6 books we read during the #GRA15

We have really enjoyed participating in The Global Read Aloud Project over the past few weeks. Students looked forward to finding out about the newest book in the author's study each week. We read 6 books in total. We used the books to increase our vocabulary, to become better writers and to connect and share on a global scale. Thanks to the project, we got to collaborate with a number of classes around the world via Twitter, Padlet, Google Hangout and Google Slides. The students loved seeing how they could interact with a story in so many different ways. We learned a lot about collaborating with friends in our room, and with new friends we are meeting online too.

Students have become better writers as a result of the author study. They are comfortable with answering questions on the books that we read. We used the books to work towards writing descriptive paragraphs that had at least 5 sentences. The students worked hard to write about their best memories and built on the strategies that they've been learning about to write a descriptive paragraph.

Students loved that creating their own OK Book on Google Slides. They are hoping to use the tool again to create books that they can share with the world. They are many blooming authors in our classroom. This book inspired some students to create their own book at the Writing Center!

 

One of the highlights for many of us was the Google Hangout that we got to do with Mrs. Mason's Grade 1/2 class in Kanata. Our classes chatted about our favourite  books in the author study. We shared our OK Books that we both wrote on Slides and took turns answering questions and sharing our learning. It was such a great way to open our classroom and chat with a class who read the same books as us!

@MrsCiampaClass We had a great time hanging out to share about these inspiring, funny & creative books #GRAAmy pic.twitter.com/Jtsgsdi48T

— Mrs.Mason (@MrsMasonOCSB) November 7, 2015

I am grateful to a wonderful teacher who lives in the United States named Pernille Ripp. For the past few years, Pernille has organized and ran The Global Read Aloud Project. Her concept has quickly spread across the world and continues to be a Global Project that many teachers (like me) look forward to teaching each year. She tweeted a thank you on Friday and asked us to share what were our best memories. Students went to the Writing Center during our centers time to reply to Pernille's Tweet with some of their best memories. TC received a response from her and he was SO excited about it. Have a read below at some of our best memories!

EB saya; my favourite book is the ok book because he had a pancake of he head @pernilleripp

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 13, 2015

PernilleRipp CD says: My favourite moment is when Mrs. Ciampa went on facetime whith another class. we talked about amykrouse books.

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 13, 2015

EB says: My favourite book is plant a kiss because when she kiss the ground and I like your book @pernilleripp

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 13, 2015

DS says: my favorite moment is when we did the sides in the ok book by Ds. @pernilleripp

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 13, 2015

BRM my favourite part was the google hangout and writing about if I planted peace !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! @pernilleripp #gra15

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 13, 2015

@MrsCiampaClass Awe that is awesome, I am so glad you had a great experience! #gra15

— Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) November 13, 2015

GRA Week 5: The OK Book

This week during the Global Read Aloud Project, we collaborated with a Grade 1/2 class nearby in Kanata. We were finally successful at connecting over Google Hangout to chat with another class. The students did such a great job at being patient and at chatting with the class over Hangout for the first time. We chatted about all of the books that we've read by Amy Krouse Rosenthal over the past few weeks during the Global Project. It was great to see the students ask so many detailed questions. They also had great answers to the questions that Mrs. Mason's class asked us. A Hangout provides students with many different opportunities to collaborate, to share, to inquire and to discover new ideas. We are opening our classroom doors on a global scale when we invite another classroom into ours via a Hangout. The students were excited about meeting Mrs. Mason's grade 1/2 class and hope that they could do it again soon. After our Hangout, her class sent us many Tweets to share more things they loved about the Global Project we are both working on. Students are beginning to use Twitter to answer questions sent to us from classes we learn with. We experimented with it at our Writing Center today.

All week we talked about what the word OK means. We experimented with Google Slides to create our own version of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's OK book. Students were challenged to use Slides and Google Draw to create their own OK images and learned how to Google and insert their own images onto their Book page. It was great to see the students experiment with a tool that they hadn't used before. They quickly became experts and were excited to help their friends learn some of tricks to using the tools. We will definitely be using Google Slides again for shared learning opportunities. Creating our own class book inspired some students to create their own books at our Writing Center. We are just in the early stages of adding ideas to our writing center but so far we have many eager authors in our room. Below is our completed OK Book. We hope you enjoy reading about our OK adventures!

GRA Week 4: Exclamation Mark

During Week 4 of the Global Read Aloud project we read the story Exclamation Mark. All week we've had a lot of fun with the story. One aspect of the story that the students enjoyed was seeing the different facial expressions of the exclamation mark. We had many discussions on how we could describe how it was feeling or the way it looked. We then talked about how we could describe ourselves using innovative adjectives.

Students brainstormed a big list of words that described themselves. We started with a small bank of words and soon it quickly grew to include many awesome describing words. Have a look below at the words we came up with. We used the Tagul website to showcase the adjectives that describe us.

GRA Week 3: It's Not Fair

This week during the 3rd week of the Global Read Aloud project, we read a book called It's Not Fair. The story talks about a series of unfortunate events that are just not fair. We made many personal connections to the story as we read through the events that were not fair. The book taught us that sometimes things in life are just not fair, and that it's ok not to get what you want sometimes.

We made text-to-text connections to the story as well as text-to-self connections and talked a lot about what kind of things we feel aren't fair. We wrote about something that isn't fair to us. Some students were reluctant to share what isn't fair, but we reminded ourselves that we are allowed to feel like something isn't fair. As long as we know that everyone feels that way sometimes, we just need to accept it and not let it bother us.

We posted and shared some of our connections to the story on a shared-Padlet again. It is so great that the students have opportunities to post their learning on Padlet with other students from around the world. The students are using Padlet weekly and are becoming experts on how to post. They are also becoming safe and responsible digital citizens who make sure they use their online presence for safe learning.

Created with Padlet

Some students got to read with a friend on the AudioBoom app. Some students are becoming experts at using this awesome iPad app. We are using it to help our reading fluency and to see if there is anything that we are missing before completing our writing task. AudioBoom is a free app. Your child can use it at home to practice reading their favourite book. When you play it back, it is neat to see how we read since we don't get to hear ourselves read very often.

Finally, we attempted to do a Google Hangout with another Grade 3 class in our city this week. We wanted to meet some other students who were participating in the Global Project like us. Students were really excited and had some questions prepared. Unfortunately we weren't able to make the facetime opportunity work. We hope to be able to do our first Hangout this week...stay tuned!

GRA Week 2 Duck Rabbit

This week we participated in the 2nd week of The Global Read Aloud Project. This time we read the book Duck Rabbit by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. The students really enjoyed reading and laughing along with this story.

While reading the book, we made many great connections to the story. As a class, we talked about the Making Connections reading strategy and recalled the 3 types of connections you can make when reading a book: Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text and Text-to-World. After reading Duck Rabbit, we talked about what other books or personal connections we can make to the story. We had many great discussions and ideas to share. We wrote about our connections and shared them with our partners.
This project is helping us to work on our reading strategies. While reading a story, good readers make connections to better understand the books that we read. Ask your child to make some connections while reading with them at home!

While reading the story, the students had many opinions to share on whether they thought it was a Duck or a Rabbit. We had many great discussions and students and to prove why they thought it was a duck or a rabbit. We still don't know for sure what the answer is. We took the official Duck Rabbit poll. We can't wait to the the results!

Is It a Duck Or A Rabbit? – Take the Official Poll #GRA15 #GRAAmy http://t.co/87D1qUG4Wf

— Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) October 14, 2015

A great thing about the Global Read Aloud Project is the opportunity to make global connections with other students who are also reading this story. This week we collaborated with friends in our class to share on a Padlet created by a teacher in the Ottawa area. Students are learning to share and collaborate with friends by sharing ideas together when posting online. This Padlet was used by other classes from around the world to write about what they liked, their favourite parts and their connections to the funny story Duck Rabbit. What a fabulous opportunity to connect and share with other students globally. Big thanks to Mrs. Martel for inviting us to share our learning with her class and others from around the world. Have a look below at the great learning our class got to share. Students loved that they could read the learning of students that they haven't met too!

Created with Padlet

Additionally, we continue to use the AudioBoom app to read with a friend. Students are using the app to read their work orally. This helps them to practice their reading fluency with a partner. When reading with a friend, we are practicing how to read clearly and with expression. Our partners also help us to make corrections to our writing too. Have a listen below to some of our great connections to the story Duck Rabbit.



Finally, after reading the story it reminded some of us of optical illusions. We looked for many great examples and were really excited about this one. What do you see in the picture?

While talking about DuckRabbit it reminded us of illusions. What do U see? @lcaluori @Gr1MrsMartel #GRA15 @missamykr pic.twitter.com/VfodJMCtP0

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) October 16, 2015

Global Read Aloud Project Week 1

This week we began working on another Global Project. The Global Read Aloud project is a 6 week author study project focusing on books by the author Amy Krouse Rosenthal.This project will take us on an interesting adventure. We will read a book by the author each week then share, post and collaborate with it online with people from around the world.

The first book in the project was called Chopsticks. After reading the story, we wrote about what we thought the author's message was. Students worked with a partner to come up with the moral or message in the story that they author wanted us to learn. A few students read their author's message on the AudioBoom app. Have a listen below at some of our great learning.
Additionally, we used Twitter to share our learning with the author of the story herself. In the first week of the project, we've already heard back from her. The students were so excited to hear from her and to see that she pays attention to Twitter messages that we send out. It is great to see the positive interactions we can make with Twitter. Not only are we using it to share our learning on the Global Read Aloud project, but we are interacting with the author of the book too. We are using the hashtag #GRA15 and #GRAAmy to share our learning with students from around the world.  Ask your child about it!

@MrsCiampaClass Well said, each and every one. :)

— Amy Krouse Rosenthal (@missamykr) October 7, 2015

The students were curious about chopsticks after reading the story. They often used pencils to try to imitate how to use chopsticks to  pick up objects. We played a Chopstick Challenge on Thursday to end the first week of the #GRA15. It was so much fun to see who could pick up and place marshmallows in a bin the quickest in 1 minute. The winning student got 26 in 1 minute! It was a great way to end our first week in the project. Next week we will continue with the project and read the story Duck Rabbit.

Showing grit in the Minute-to-Win-it Chopstick Challenge! #gra15 #globalreadaloud pic.twitter.com/wieQGFm5rA

— Paul Gautreau (@paugaut) October 8, 2015

Hi @missamykr Thanks for the message and the amazing book Chopsticks. We think it's really fantastic! #GRA15 #GRAAmy https://t.co/OaABlqhpEL

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) October 8, 2015