Fall 2015

Wow! The year has started, Halloween has come and gone, and I am just getting a chance to write. This year our school started a week later than normal, so I feel like these first couple months of school have just been a sprint to try and catch up. We have been covering our usual types of lessons and activities that we tend to do with the students at the beginning of the year. These lessons consist of learning how to navigate the library and introducing reading programs for the fall. We also recently had a fun author and illustrator come to visit our school!

I wanted to start by sharing our library "theme" for the year. This fall we are not only having our 3rd and 4th graders participate in the Texas Bluebonnet Reading Program, but we also introduced and are encouraging our Pre-k through 2nd graders to read the Texas 2x2 books. These are both Texas reading programs so our theme this year is a Texas theme.   

 

The kids are reading all of the books from the two programs furiously and loving them. When they read a book, they check it off on our Texas 2x2 wall or our Read 5 Then Decide wall. When they have read 5 they will be eligible to vote for their favorite book in January. 

    

When the kids have read 10 2x2 or Bluebonnet books they are featured on our "Wanted" wall. They are "Wanted"  because they are reading bandits. The kids LOVE this, and it is really helping to get some of our reluctant readers to read more! We have many student pictures to add to this wall, so it is a wall in progress, but we are so proud of our students for going above and beyond the 5 book requirement. If they then read all 20 of the 2x2 or Bluebonnet books they will receive a sheriff's badge sticker that says, "20" on their wanted poster. We are also encouraging our students to write book reviews, or advertise these books in creative ways and doing drawings for library related prizes at the end of the month if they decide to participate. You can imagine how hard it has been to keep these books on the shelves. After our lessons each week kids are literally sprinting and fighting to get to these books. The library can be a dangerous place if you are anywhere near the 2x2 or Bluebonnet shelf right after a lesson ends, but I am so glad the kids are excited to read them! 

In other news, author and illustrator, David Macaulay visited our school a few weeks ago which was really neat!  He stayed for two days and spoke with our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders as well as some of our Middle and Upper School classes. 

Here Mr. Macaulay is speaking with our 2nd graders about his book, Shortcut. This was a great book to share with 2nd graders because they had to really use their predicting and inferencing skills and tell the story by carefully studying the pictures. A very cool opportunity.       

It has been a great, yet very busy start to the school year! More soon!