Week 18 and 19

These past two weeks have been super fun and as result, they sure did go by fast!

With our CDC kiddos I repeated a lesson I did with our Pre-K a couple of weeks ago using the book Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum. Go here to see more about the lesson.

The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood 

The Loud Book by Deborah Underwood

Both Read to: Pre-K 

Skills: Compare and Contrast these two sounds and books 

With Pre-K I used one old book that we had (The Quiet Book) and one new book that we just ordered (The Loud Book) to do a lesson all about sounds. We read The Quiet Book first and afterwards we tried to think of other sounds that are quiet. Then we read The Loud Book, and boy did it get louder in the library! Ha! They had no problems thinking of other loud sounds after we read this one. Two great books to compare and contrast to one another!     

Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley

Read to: Kinder and Primer

Skills: Non-fiction texts

Our Kinder students have just begun venturing out to the main library to choose their books. However, we are taking it a few sections at a time so it is not too overwhelming to them. Last week, we reviewed what nonfiction meant, read this nonfiction book, and then checked out books from the nonfiction section. This is a great nonfiction book that was short, had key nonfiction text features that I could point out to the kids, and the students loved learning some cool new facts about Red-Eyed Tree Frogs!   

My Heart Will Not Sit Down by Mara Rockliff

Read to: 3rd Grade 

Skills: Historical Fiction genre and answering questions about the text

One of my current goals is to read a variety of genres to all of the kids so that they can be exposed to different types of texts. With third grade we focused on the Historical Fiction genre once again this week. I was recently introduced to this book and with Valentine's Day last week and our school theme for the year being gratitude, it was a perfect book to share aloud. It is based on a true story about a girl living in the African village of Cameroon. She hears about America's Great Depression from her teacher and she wants to help. Her heart will not sit down until she does everything she can to try and help, but she is left to wonder if she alone will be able to make a difference? It was a neat story that lead to some great discussions with the third graders.   

Finally, with fourth grade last week we began their biography research project. The first day I had all of the fourth grade classes in the library to introduce the project, discuss plagiarism, learn and practice taking notes, and give the kids a chance to browse our biographies so they could think about who they maybe wanted to research. The following day I saw all of the classes again to introduce how to find citation information in a book and from a database. This is many of our students' first time to conduct research and learn these types of skills so it was an intense couple of days! It is not something that they will most likely grasp right away so it is just a start. However, I was so glad that the fourth grade Humanities teachers and I collaborated on this project because I think it was a really beneficial start to this particular project and research in general. I am looking forward to see what we can collaborate on next!      

Week 17

We had a great week in the Lower School Library! Here is what we were up to.

Librarian On the Roof! M.G. King

Read to: Pre-K 

Skills: Change Makers

In Pre-K this month they are studying change makers. So for this week I decided to focus on that topic, but rather change makers in our community or in this case, state! I chose to read this book because it is a true story about a librarian, named RoseAleta Laurell. She is the new librarian at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, and she is surprised that there isn't an adequate children's section in the library. She then vows to raise the money for a children's section and spends a week living and working on the library roof, even surviving a dangerous storm. With the help of the entire town, RoseAleta raises the money she needs, plus more for her library. This is a wonderful book that hopefully helped in their understanding and learning about change makers.  

TumbleBooks!

Introduced to 1st and 2nd Grades

I reminded our first and second grade classes of a great resource that our library provides for the school, TumbleBooks! TumbleBooks is an online collection of animated talking picture books that kids can read and listen to wherever and whenever! This is our third year to provide this for our students and they really seem to love it! Each of the books is narrated by different people, they offer a variety of different types of stories, and they continue to add more and more books to the collection. Definitely a great learning tool for beginner readers or those that want to practice their reading skills with a new book to read everyday.     

  

The Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleischman

Read to: 3rd Grade

Skills: Exploring Historical Fiction and Immigration as well as using skills such as inferencing and questioning while reading.   

Third Grade is studying immigration right now, so I decided to read a story that touched on that topic, but also a story that brought in the genre of Historical Fiction. One of my goals is to read a variety of genres to the students and encourage them to try some of these genres for themselves in their independent reading. This story is a great one and it is an easy one to practice some essential skills that our kids are working on such as asking questions, making inferences, and making connections while reading. 

   

Monsieur Marceau

Read to: 4th Grade

Skills: Exploring a Biography 

With Fourth Grade I did a similar lesson as the one above but I shared a different book and a different genre. Fourth grade is about to begin a research paper on a biography so I decided to share one with them, while practicing some of the same skills such as questioning and inferencing. This book was on this year's Texas Bluebonnet list and it is a picture book biography about the famous French actor and mime, Marcel Marceau. It is a beautiful story and one that I was anxious to read aloud. Several kids had told me they read it, but didn't quite understand it, so I was excited to finally have a chance to discuss it with them and help them understand it better.  

  

Another added bonus of last week was having an opportunity to work collaboratively with one of the third grade teachers, Mrs. Dzialowski, and two of her Humanities classes on a mini project. One of her goals for this year is to improve her Nonfiction book section of her classroom library, but in order to do that she needed to know what topics third graders are mostly interested in. So together we decided to bring her classes in to go on a nonfiction book search. As the students browsed the books, they were to complete a survey and write down nonfiction topics that interested them. Out of those topics they then could choose one book to bring back to share with the class and tell why they really enjoy that particular topic. Here were some pictures throughout the activity. 

  

It was a really eye opening lesson for the kids and for us. Many of the kids discovered books and areas in our nonfiction section that they never knew where there or that they had not ever explored before. In addition, together we heard what the kids really want to read and what they would like to see more of in both of our libraries. It was a fun lesson and I was glad we did it together. I am hoping to do a similar lesson with some of the other grades and classes to hopefully help them see that there are other great books, especially nonfiction, that they could be missing out on!      

Finally, last Tuesday was a late start day and the library was paired with Third Grade!  We decided to make it a Bluebonnet book activity day so the kids participated in a few different fun crafts and activities that went along with some of this year's Bluebonnet nominated books.     

One table was a make your own dreadful sweater like Lester's in Lester's Dreadful Sweaters by K.G Campbell. After they created their sweater, they then had to write how they would get rid of the sweater, just as Lester does in the book.      

Here are some of the final products.  

They turned out really dreadful! Ha! 

Another table was a create your own comic using the book, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo for an example. We found a cool app that the kids could easily make a comic on the ipad and they had a good time.

Finally, the last center was creating your own fractured fairy tale using the book, Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Lisa Shurtliff as an inspiration. The kids used a website we found from Read,Write, Think. Here is the link: 

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/fairytales/ 

They made some really cool fractured tales and overall it was a good time had by all!