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