Week 21

We returned from Spring Break and hit the ground running. Here is what we were up to this week.

Super Hair-O and the Barber of Doom by John Rocco

Big Bouffant by Kate Hosford

Both books read to: CDC and Pre-K classes

Skills: Compare and Contrast the two stories  

These two books are somewhat new to our library this year and since they are all about hair I knew I wanted to pair them together for a read aloud. After reading both books we practiced comparing and contrasting the two stories. When reading it to the first class, just by coincidence I noticed that each of the authors of these books put a picture of themselves on the back cover with the same hairstyle as the character in their story, so this was also really fun to discuss and compare. The kids loved seeing each author's picture, and it lead us into a great discussion as to why the authors wrote these stories. Some questions I heard were. Are the authors really writing about themselves in the story? Is it a true story or a fictional one? Great wonderings!         

Ribbit by Rodrigo Folgueria

Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea

Both Books Read to: Kinder and Primer

Skills: Discussing other's differences and friendship

With our Kinder an Primer classes we focused on the theme of friendship and accepting others' differences. In Ribbit! the pig continues to say the word Ribbit because he is trying to fit in and make new friends. However, the frogs of the pond don't get it, until he leaves to find other friends. 

In Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great the goat just assumes he doesn't like the unicorn and thinks the unicorn is just showing off. However, he soon realizes that he he really likes unicorn as he gets to know him. Both were great books in reminding the kids about our differences, taking the time to get to know one another, and how to be a good friend to everyone.      

Good News, Bad News by Jeff Mack

Read to: First Grade

Skills: Making Predictions and drawing conclusions 

In First Grade we continued to practice the skills of making a prediction and drawing conclusions. Last week we focused on two books that only used one word throughout to tell the story and this book was the same. This book is also written by one of last weeks' authors, Jeff Mack. As we read it together we took turns really studying the pictures on each page, making inferences, and then predicting what we thought would happen next. The kids are great at this skill and they always notice something that I had never seen or even thought about! They are so clever! With this book we also discussed that it could be used to practice the skill of cause and effect, and it also taught a lesson about the importance of staying positive. So all in all I give this book a big thumbs up!        

The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever by Joseph H. Hopkins 

Read to: 3rd Grade

Skills: Celebrating Women's History Month, and discovering genre.

With 3rd grade this week we focused on March being Women's History Month. I decided to share this new book to our collection. This story focuses on a woman named Katherine Olivia Sessions and how she changed the city of San Diego, California. "After becoming the first woman to graduate from the University of California with a degree in science, she took a job as a teacher far south in the dry desert town of San Diego. Where there were almost no trees. Kate decided that San Diego needed trees more than anything else. So this trailblazing young woman singlehandedly started a massive movement that transformed the town into the green, garden-filled oasis it is today. Now, more than 100 years after Kate first arrived in San Diego, her gorgeous gardens and parks can be found all over the city." 

After reading this book we had a great discussion about staying strong and following your dreams.  

Obert Skye author study with 4th grade. 

Next week author Obert Skye will be visiting our school to speak with the 4th graders and middle school kids. So this week in class we did a small author study. We viewed the books he has written, read a little about him, watched a few trailers to get excited about his books, and wrote down any questions we wanted to be sure to ask him. Not many of our kids were familiar with Obert, but after learning about him, his books were flying off of the shelves! We look forward to meeting him!     

Obert Skye's First book in the Leven Thumps series: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

And finally, I just had to share this photo. For the 3rd and 4th grade classes that won the Bluebonnet party for reading the most books, one of the door prizes we gave out was a coupon in which you could become the "librarian for the day." So here is the lucky third grader that was super excited to cash in her coupon and check out her classmates' books. She did a super job and had fun! Maybe we should have a librarian for the day more often?!

Week 20 and Texas Bluebonnet Award

As I have mentioned a few times, our 3rd and 4th graders participate in the Texas Bluebonnet reading program. Every year twenty books are chosen as the "Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List" by the Bluebonnet selection committee. Then if students read a minimum of five books out of the twenty they can vote for their favorite title during the month of January each year. The author of the book receiving the most votes statewide is declared the winner of the Texas Bluebonnet Award.

So this year our kids read the Bluebonnet books like crazy. All twenty of the books were fabulous, so it was understandable. However, we also challenged all of the classes to see which 3rd and 4th grade classes could read the most Bluebonnets. We told them to record books as they read them, and in the end the two classes that read the most would get a special surprise. They were so excited!

So this past January we had 52 3rd and 4th graders vote. Voting ended on January 31st and the winning Bluebonnet book was supposed to be announced soon after. However, it kept being postponed due to other schools in Texas not being finished with voting because of inclement weather days.  It got to where the kids were really frustrated with me in thinking that I was just trying to torture them by not telling them who the winning book was, but I assured them that I was getting frustrated too! However, the winner was finally announced on February 19th, so I couldn't wait to make the big announcement to all of our kids at our Monday morning assembly this past week.

At the assembly I started off by reminding the students that we were not the only ones who voted. Actually, 181,734 students across Texas voted. That is a lot of kids! So with 28,398 votes the 2014 Texas Bluebonnet Award winning book is:

Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If you Want to Survive the School Bus By John Grandits    

Here I am showing the cover. 

I will say our kids were pretty shocked by the winner. Not many had read the book since it was one of the picture books. I think they got more wrapped up with the chapter books which is great, but this one just got a little over looked. Either way they still cheered loud and since then I have been sharing it with all of the classes and they really like it. I read it to a 4th grade class last week, and after I was done reading it someone said "well now I get why that book won."  

I then went on to announce the second and third place books as I know our kids would be curious to know. 

In second place with 21,662 votes and also the book that was most voted for by our students at Greenhill was:

Wonder by R.J. Palacio   

This got a really big applause! What a super book this is! The kids were really curious to know what book I would have voted for if I was voting and I told them that this would have been it. 

Finally in third place with 19,352 votes was:

Giants Beware by Jorge Aguirre

I then announced the 3rd and 4th graders that won the book contest for reading the most Bluebonnets. In 3rd grade the class that won read a total of 54 Bluebonnet books and in 4th grade the winning class read 83 books. That is a lot of great reading! Their prize was that they got to have a celebration in the library. 

On their celebration day when they entered we had them walk the "red carpet" or should I say the "read carpet?" Ha! Then in the background we had the song "We are the Champions" playing.  It was a nice touch. :)        

The "red carpet"

Then we had a little awards ceremony. We gave out prizes to the top readers and then we drew names out of a hat for the kids to have a chance to win some fun coupons and prizes. 

After the awards ceremony the kids enjoyed some popcorn and played some board games. 

4th graders playing. 

3rd graders playing.

The kids had a blast. I had several come up to me after school last week to say that they had the best time at the party, and that made me so happy. They sure earned it! Hopefully this will inspire the kids to read even more next year.