Myron J. Francis Art Night 2018 is here! Student art work in K-5, done with our awesome art teacher, Mrs. Singleton, is displayed around the school. The fifth graders perform a chorus and band concert with Mrs. Corrente and Ms. Carpenter. And several grades will display their library multimedia projects done in collaboration with art class. If you miss the art show, you can see some of the projects on our Francis School YouTube page. See specific projects below:

Bug Slideshows in 2nd Grade
Students in 2nd grade examined and drew different types of bugs in art class. In library, students researched facts about the bugs and created a Puppet.edu slideshow using their art and research. 
​

​Chatterpix Biographies in 3rd Grade
Students in 3rd grade drew portraits of famous people in art class. In library class, they researched the people using PebbleGo and created a narrated biography video using the Chatterpix app.

Countries Around the World Stop Motion in 5th Grade
Students in 5th grade did a stop motion research project on countries around the world. They painted landscapes of their countries and relevant objects in art class. They researched facts about the countries and created short stop motion movies in library using the landscape painting and objects as their foundation. They also listened to music from their countries gathered by our music teacher, Mrs. Corrente, and incorporated it into the movies. 
​

On Friday, we held our annual 5th grade Rooster Games. Students who read and reported on seven of the twenty Rhode Island Children's Book Award (RICBA) nominees were eligible to participate. We began with an overview of the intent and spirit of the games, the schedule, and passed out RI Children's Book Award t-shirts. Students then broke into their teams and had a few minutes to create a team song, cheer, or handshake to generate team spirit. At 9:30, we began the official rounds with everyone following a set timed schedule. 
Rounds included:
Title Scramble Round
Object Round
Dialog Round
Character Motivation Round
First Line/Last Line Round
Invention Station (inspired by the book Whoosh!, students had 10 minutes to create a toy from random materials)
Snack Room

Each team also had non-scoring add-on games in their folders in case they finished early which included Rooster Games charades, word search, and illustration matching.

At the end of the round rotations, we met back in the library and played a multiple choice round together. We ended with a Rooster Game survey, pizza and cookies. 

Students had a great time working together to answer game questions about the books, creating toys at the invention station, and eating snacks and pizza. The survey was very helpful in determining students' favorite activities and generating feedback. See graph, comments, and photos below. 
​

In preparation for our annual Rooster Games, I read fifth grade students, Wet Cement: A Mix of Concrete Poems by Bob Raczka, a 2018 RI Children's Book Awards nominee. We discussed how concrete poems are sometimes called "shape poetry" because their visual appearance matches the topic of the poem. Students created their own concrete poems on a topic of their choice. We only had fifteen minutes for the writing piece. I was amazed at the creativity of their poems especially given the short amount of time. Check out some of their poems below: 

Grade 1
First graders will be listening to stories with a focus on character traits. After, they will choose their favorite book character and create a trading card that we will exchange with classmates at the end of the unit.
​

 Third graders have been working on a stop motion biography project. In library, students researched famous people using the Pebble Go Biography database and wrote about their person. In art class, students painted backgrounds and drew their person and props. Back in library, they narrated their writing and created a stop motion video using the materials they made in art.  We used the Stop Motion Studio app to create the videos on iPods or iPads mounted on tripods. Overall, students did a great job learning the app, recording the narration, and animating their pieces to create their stop motion biography. In addition to learning two new digital tools - one for researching and one for creating, students had to learn how to work together to create their movies. It was great to see students problem solving both technical and writing issues and figuring out roles that worked best for them i.e. operating equipment, directing, set and prop placement. Students also learned perseverance in the face of common video making obstacles like lighting changes, noisy rooms while recording, and technical glitches with the app. Overall, I think the project went very well and hope to do it again next year for a fifth grade research project. Special shout out to the Rhode Island Foundation Spark Grant that helped fund the Pebble Go database and equipment. Also, thanks to Media Smart Libraries for inspiring the stop motion idea and funding the iPods. And a huge thanks to our awesome art teacher, Mrs. Singleton, for collaborating with me on this project!
See below stop motion biography videos:
​

March is a busy time of year in our library. In many classes, we are working on material to display at our annual Art Show. Most of the Art Show projects involve work done with Mrs. Singleton, our art teacher, research done in library, and presenting the combined art and research using digital tools.

Kindergarten
K's are wrapping up our collaborative unit on birds and ocean animals.  Students read fiction and nonfiction texts, created the animals in art, and performed a song about the birds and ocean animals that will be shown at our annual Art Show in April.

Grade 1
Students in first grade are ending a unit on Favorite Book Characters. After several classes of reading and discussing book characters, students created a character trading card to trade with classmates. The conversations about the characters and persuasive arguments on why cards should be traded were amazing. Each student went home with their original trading card and five new character cards.



Grade 2
Students in second grade are watching their bug slideshows this week. Another collaboration with Mrs. Singleton to be shown at our Art Show, students did bug research in library class and painted bugs in art class. Using the Shadow Puppet EDU app, students created digital slideshows combining artwork and research. See slideshows below.

Grade 3
Students in third grade are working on stop motion biography movies - another art show feature. In art, students drew pictures of a famous person along with props associated with that person. They did research in library and are putting it all together in a stop motion movie using the Stop Motion Studio app.

Grade 4
Students in fourth grade are creating infographics about countries around the world. First, they researched a country in groups using Culturegrams. Now they are using that information to create a digitial infographic about their country using the digital design tool, Canva.

Grade 5
Students in fifth grade are in the process of writing Fact or Fiction Podcasts about a research topic. After researching an assigned topic, students write a game-show style podcast where the audience needs to guess which statements are facts and which statements are fiction. We will record the podcasts using the iRig Recorder app/microphone.

Gordon School/Francis Rooster Games
The Rooster Games is an event sponsored by Gordon School in collaboration with Myron J. Francis School that promotes children’s literature using the twenty books on the RI Children’s Book Award nominee list. Fifth grade students must independently read at least seven books from the lists and hand in book reports to their classroom teacher in order to attend.

Teams, consisting of Francis and Gordon students working together, move through a series of activities including word puzzles, character motivation, setting, and object association questions. The day culminates in a game-show style quiz involving all of the students. See below for highlights of the games.

Before the holiday break, third graders tried their hand at creating haiku poems about what they would do over vacation. First, we read Santa Clauses: Short Poems from the North Pole by Bob Raczka which is a diary-style poetry book composed by Santa with a haiku for each day in the month of December. The premise is clever and a perfect segue into haiku writing for third graders.  See below for examples of their work.





Will play piano
For my family at night
Under the lit sky
 - Molly


In the dark night sky
We celebrate the nice guy
Then open presents
 - Austin


We go to our church
We sing beautiful carols
Then we go sledding
 - Lelani


We will sing awhile
I will play with my new toys
Love this year’s Christmas
 - Kendra


Will decorate tree
Only snow on Christmas day
Parties all the time
 - Acadia


We make snow angels
Sled down big hills through the night
Watch the white snow fall
 - Hayden