Reader’s Chair

Each Wednesday one student has the opportunity to share a book of his/her choice with the class. This week, Danni had the opportunity to share one of her favorite books.

Students are given one week to choose a “just right book” to share. Students are expected to practice reading their book aloud to family and friends at home. Students present the book to their class, reading the book aloud, engaging the audience by making eye contact, showing illustrations and asking questions to check for their understanding.

Danni chose a classic Fable book to share with the class. Danni was well prepared. She read her book with confidence obviously having practiced reading at home. She made notes for herself to stop at certain points to ask her audience questions to check for understanding.

Earlier this year, Grade 2 students studied about Fables. Danni reminded us that no one really knows who wrote the original Hare and Tortoise tale. BUT thanks to people like Aesop who collected and wrote down these ancient tales, we can enjoy reading and retelling these wonderful stories again and again.

This Week’s IST Grade 2 Reading Recommendation:

The Hare and The Tortoise
Retold by Carol Jones, Aesop
Illustrated by Carol Jones

Interest Level: K – 2
Grade Level Equivalent: 3.5
Lexile® measure: 620L
DRA: 38
Guided Reading: O

Other versions of The Hare and The Tortoise:

There are many online versions of this classic tale. Here is a short illustrated version from childhoodreading.com.

Here is a fantastic clip, Sesame Street News Flash – The Tortoise & The Hare Rematch. Sesame Street retold the classic tale and added some new details to make it even more fun to listen and watch.

A Visit With John Kilaka

Karibu Mr. Kilaka!

John Kilaka is a well known author, story teller and artist from Tanzania. Thanks to our librarian Ms. Toms, Mr. Kilaka will be visiting with classes this week during library time to share his passion for Tinga-Tinga art and story telling. He is recognized globally for his work, most recently celebrated on the animated BBC CBeebies Tinga-Tinga Tales.

Here is the short introduction clip from Tinga-Tinga Tales:

Dear Mr. Kilaka,

Thank you for coming to IST to share your book, True Friends: A Tale from Tanzania and Tinga-Tinga Stories with us.

From the book True Friends: A Tale from Tanzania

“Only Rat knows how to make fire, and he generously provides it to all the other animals. When his best friend, Elephant, suggests that Rat store his food in Elephant’s solid house, Rat agrees. But when the drought comes, Elephant refuses to share the stored food. “You are tiny, and you don’t need much, ” he says. “So go away.” When the other animals return to fetch their fire, Rat is gone and Elephant is worried. What will his betrayed friend do?” from FlipKart.com

Jodie said, “I really like the book about True Friends. I liked the part where they were all friends again.”

Said said, “I also liked the True Friends book. I liked the part where the characters steal all the food from each other. We all loved getting autographs from you!”

We all appreciate you spending time with us at IST, telling us stories, showing us your movies and drawing beautiful pictures for us.

We hope you come back and visit us again soon.

IST Grade 2
Kung Fu
Praying Mantids

Here we are making our best Tinga-Tinga character pose with Mr. Kilaka.

Learning Links:

Learn more about Mr. Kilaka, his books, stories and his art work.

Learn more about Edward S. Tingatinga – the person credited for creating the popular “Tinga-Tinga” style painting.

View some beautiful Tinga-Tinga style paintings from local artists in Tanzania.

Thanks for the Party!

Dear Parents (aka moms and dads),

Thank you for giving us a nice party on Wednesday. We got to eat lots of yummy food. Thank you for taking time from your work to come to our class and watch us present our fables. We really liked reading and performing our fables for you. We also want to say thank you for the nice prizes you bought us.

We had a lot of fun presenting our fables and spending time with you. We enjoyed eating all the yummy food too.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

You can view all of our Fable Presentation pictures on the IST Grade 2 Flickr site.

The Grade 2 Kung Fu Praying Mantids

Buzzing Bee Fables

Students in Grade 2 have spent the term reading and learning all about fables and stories. As part of the end of unit assessment students were to take their self created fables and turn it into a presentation to show the rest of the class. The Grade 2 Buzzing Bees decided on 3 choices of presentations- puppet show, drama and IT (Instructional Technology). We had a great time creating and presenting our fables.

Lara Nikitas,
Buzzing Bees Class

A Visit to IST Secondary School

Dear Mr. Joe and the 9th Grade Class,

Thank you for telling us your fairy tales, folk tales and fables. We liked all of the stories you presented to us. One of our favorites was the story about “Peter Rabbit”. We liked the pictures and the fun sound effects from the stories. We also liked the way that you presented the story, giving us a chance to choose how the story ends. It was fun for us to visit you at the IST Secondary School.

We hope that you liked our fable about the Monkey and the Chicken. We hope that we will see you again soon.

Thank you!
The Grade 2 Kung Fu Praying Mantids

written by Lucca, Henry and Danni

Fable Presentation – A Visit from the Office

Today Grade 2 students had a surprise visit from the main office. Dr. Peacock (the cheeky monkey), Ms. Helen (the brainless chicken) and Ms. Jill (the amazing narrator) volunteered to act out our Monkey and the Chicken fable. This play was an example of just one way for students to start thinking about how they want to present their own fable to the rest of the class.

Thank you Dr. Peacock, Ms. Helen and Ms. Jill for acting out our class fable.

After the play, Mr. McKillip demonstrated another way for students to present their fables. Students have been working with Ms. Alex in the computer lab to learn more about the application Keynote. Mr. McKillip used Keynote and his Mac to create pictures for the slides and even the voice that read the fable aloud.

Grade 2 Storytelling Fieldtrip

Dear Grade 2 Parents,

Grade 9 IT Students at IST Secondary have used 21st century technology to re-vitalize some fairy tales, folktales and fables. They have kindly invited the Grade 2 students to view them as part of Grade 9’s evaluation process. This fits perfectly with our unit of inquiry on fables, which has also included folktales and fairy tales.

2L and 2M will go to the secondary campus on Thursday 10th December leaving the elementary campus at 8:30 and returning by 10:30 am.

2P and 2N will go to the secondary campus on Wednesday 16th December leaving the elementary campus at 8:30 and returning by 10.30 am.

A notice and permission slip will be sent home. Please sign and return this slip to your student’s homeroom teacher as soon as possible.

Regards,

The Grade 2 Team

More Fables with the Kung Fu Praying Mantids

As all of Grade 2 continues to investigate stories, each class is writing their own collaborative fable. The Kung Fu Praying Mantids decided to write their fable based on an Aesop fable known as the Fox and the Goat. As a class we read this fable together. We discussed and clearly identified the fable story elements; the setting, the animal characters and their human traits, the problem and the actions that take place in the fable to explain or demonstrate the moral or lesson.

We brainstormed different ways to tell our fable using our own story elements in order to teach the same moral or lesson. We used our fable planner and storyboard to organize our ideas. We worked as a class to create a new setting, characters with similar traits, an almost identical problem and solution. We created the following fable to reinforce the important details and elements of telling a fable. Enjoy!

Writing Fables with the Lively Ladybugs

After several weeks of studying the elements of fables and comparing and contrasting them to fairy tales and other stories, the Lively Ladybugs excitedly set out to write a class fable. We started with a planning sheet where we decided what moral we wanted to teach, an act of kindness always comes back to you. Next we choose our setting, Serengeti, and talked about a setting being more than just a place; its the weather, time of day, and time of year. After that we discussed how are characters should be animals who actually live in that setting and are often times seen as natural enemies or good/bad. We decided upon a zebra and a leopard. After much brainstorming, we filled in the last part of our fable planner with our problem: a leopard is stuck in a tree and is too scared to get down.

Once our planner was completed we used a storyboard to outline the fable. This paper had 6 boxes on it where we sketched out the sequence of our fable and wrote a short sentence under each picture to remind us of what is happening. Once this was completed it was finally time to write then edit our fable. Here is our final draft; we hope you enjoy!

Hello from Dr. MacDonald!

Hi IST readers! It was fun for me to read your notes. I am glad you enjoyed my visit and my books. I have so much fun writing these books and then I love sharing them with everybody I can meet.

Since I left you I have been traveling constantly. I went first to Bahrain and then to Oman. There I told stories in international schools in Muscat and then fly south to Salalah where a friend lives. She and I went to the Empty Quarter to spend a night sleeping on the sand! We were hosted by a Bedouin Sheik. Well we paid him to take us out. It was remarkable. We slept on carpets spread on the sand. I stayed awake most of the night so I could watch the stars. At first I could not identify any constellations because ALL of the stars were so bright. But then about 9 pm Orion came up over the horizon. So I just kept watching Orion climb up the sky all night. I kept my glasses on so every time I woke up I could look up and see where Orion was now. There were shooting stars passing through Orion’s belt all night. I thought it was just normal, but I learned next day that it was a meteor shower called the Orionids and only took place for three days. I was lucky to be there just then.

After that I went to Bonn, Germany and hiked near the Rhine River with my daughter and her husband and their 4 year old daughter. Lots of falling leaves.

Now I am home in Seattle with…lots of falling raindrops! I love it.

Dr. Margaret R. MacDonald