Week 21- Reading Celebrations!

This past week was National Read Across America Day which falls on Dr. Seuss' Birthday, World Read Aloud Day, and also the week we decided to celebrate the 3rd and 4th grade classes that read the most Bluebonnet books. So we definitely did a lot of celebrating in the library this week!

Dr. Seuss books out on display on Dr. Seuss Day! 

As you might recall from my last post, the 3rd and 4th grade classes that read the most Bluebonnet books were awarded with a surprise, and that surprise was a party. So this week on Monday and Wednesday we celebrated the two classes that won when they came to the library. When the kids entered they walked the "blue" carpet, because come on, they are reading celebrities people! Then we had a little award ceremony where we gave prizes to the top readers of every class and then other fun things to other students that participated. Afterwards, the kids could play an array of games.  Our theme this year in the library is a bowling theme, so in keeping with our theme the kids could play board games, but they could also play Wii bowling! We collaborated with our school tech team to set it all up and make it happen. It worked beautifully and the kids loved it!    

Here are a few pics of our award ceremonies       

A 4th grade student giving an acceptance speech. Too funny! 

Then it was off to play the games!

Some kids decided to play the board games...     

And others were all about the Wii bowling!

Thankfully we had two Wii stations set up! 

Then Wednesday we celebrated World Read Aloud Day in the library and throughout the Lower School. In the library we had guest readers sign up to read to the library classes. It was so fun and the kids loved having someone new read to them!  All of the books our readers shared were of course about the love of books and reading so it was perfect!  

Third graders hearing a story read by Ms. Manning, a Kindergarten teacher.  

Primer students hearing a story by our music teacher, Mrs. Holmes

Multi-age students hearing a story by Mr. Ivory, one of our great facility operators.

Second graders hearing a story from Mrs. Stenberg, our literacy specialist. 

Pre-K hearing a story read by Mrs. Young, director of our alumni relations.

First grade hearing a story by Mrs. Majefski, our Lower School Counselor. 

Everyone did such a great job reading, I was super impressed as were the kids! It was such a fun day and I have some ideas up my sleeve that I want to incorporate next year to make it even more fun. Yay for books and reading!

Week 20

Wow! What a couple of crazy weeks we have had with lots of snow and ice days! Even so, we still managed to read some great books and do some fun lessons in the library.  


This week many of our lessons focused on Black History Month.

Mousetronaut by Mark Kelly

Mae Jemison by Eric Braun

Read to: Pre-K, Kinder, and Primer

Skills: Learn about the features of a biography while discussing Black History Month  

I wanted to teach our students about Black History Month, and also wanted them to be introduced to the biography genre. So I started off with the fiction picture book, Mousetronanut, written by astronaut Mark Kelly to give them a fun book about space, as well as astronauts and animals that have gone to space. After reading it, I then asked if anyone had ever learned or wondered about other astronauts that have gotten to go to space. I told them that I wanted to read a book about another real astronaut, but that this one was a nonfiction book about the first African American woman to go to space. We read the biography about Mae Jemison while talking about how she was a change maker in our country and pointing out the features of a biography. I feel like the two books went well together and it helped the kids make connections with many themes.                 

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

Read to: 1st and 2nd Grade

Skills: Read a story in honor of Black History Month 

First and second grade read the story of Ruby Bridges. Ruby was a first grader when she was ordered to attend first grade at William Frantz Elementary, an all-white school in New Orleans. Ruby has to face angry parents and mobs of people daily who refuse to send their children to school with her. It is a great story that demonstrates Ruby's courage, faith, and bravery, and a wonderful book to share while discussing Black History Month. After reading, we had some great discussions together and last week second grade even had the privilege of coming to the library to view the movie.

  

White Water by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein

Read to: 3rd and 4th Grade

Skills: Read a story in honor of Black History Month. Practice making connections and asking questions about the story.    

Finally with our third and fourth grade classes we read this powerful book, White Water by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein.  

    

For a young boy growing up in the segregated south, a town drinking fountain becomes the source of an epiphany.

It's a scorching hot day, and going into town with Grandma is one of Michael's favorite things. When the bus pulls up, they climb in and pay their fare, get out, walk to the back door, and climb in again. By the time they arrive in town, Michael's throat is as dry as a bone, so he runs to the water fountain. But after a few sips, the warm, rusty water tastes bad. Why is the kid at the "Whites Only" fountain still drinking? Is his water clear and refreshingly cool? No matter how much trouble Michael might get into, he's determined to find out for himself. Based on a transformative experience co-author Michael Bandy had as a boy, this compelling story sheds light on the reality of segregation through a child's eyes, while showing the powerful awareness that comes from daring to question the way things are. (Amazon.com)

In the end Michael discovers that the water comes from the same pipe and tastes the same so he begins to question the signs above the fountain, "why do they have to be separate?" He also questions everything he has ever been taught growing up.  I knew this book would lead to some amazing questions and discussions even some we didn't have time to get to in our short library time, so I had the kids record their thoughts, connections, and wonderings while I read. We then discussed as much as we had time for, but by having the kids write down their thinking I got everyone to participate and it was my way of "hearing" from everyone. A great, great story!           

As you know 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 once again our kids read the Bluebonnet books like crazy. However, like last year we also challenged all of the classes to see which 3rd and 4th grade classes could read the most Bluebonnets. They had to record the 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 a total of 101 3rd and 4th graders vote, and the official winning book was announced soon after voting ended.  I then made the big announcement to all of our kids at our Late Start Day Assembly a few weeks ago. 

At the assembly I started off by reminding the students that we were not the only ones who voted. Actually, 130,997 students across Texas voted. That is a lot of kids! So with 29,674 votes the 2015 Texas Bluebonnet Award winning book is:

The Day the Crayons Quit 

by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

The kids were so excited! I almost couldn't get them to quiet down for me to announce the second and third place winners. 

In second place with 14,185  votes was:

Dead City

by James Ponti

Finally in third place with 8,150 votes was: 

Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin 

by Liesel Shurtliff

 

I then announced the 3rd and 4th grade classes that won the book contest for reading the most Bluebonnets. In 3rd grade the class that won read a total of 100 Bluebonnet books and in 4th grade the winning class read 77 books. That is a lot of great reading! Their prize is that they get to have a celebration in the library. So I will post pics soon after we have their special celebrations.

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! 

Weeks 15 and 16

We are back at school and getting settled into the new year! As always we are busy busy, so here is what we have been up to since we returned from the holiday break.

Read it, Don't Eat it! By Ian Schoenherr

Read to: CDC Multiage class 

Skills: Book Care

I Took My Frog to the Library by Eric A. Kimmel 

Read to: CDC Multiage Class 

This week we began seeing the Child Development Center's multi-age class. They are a group of 3 and 4 year olds at our school and it was their first time visiting the library. We read books about what one does at the library as well as how to treat library books when we borrow them. We all had a great time.       

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller

Read to: Pre-K 

Skills: Learn about making a resolution  

With the Pre-K classes we discussed what it means to make a resolution. We read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller and then shared resolutions that they will try to make for the new year.   

Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum by Lisa Wheeler

Read to: Pre-K

Skills: Recall events from the story and practice sequencing

The next week we had a fun time reading a book all about bubble gum! Now this is a little older book, but it was a book that was brought to my attention again at a recent teacher training and it is so cute. Lots of animals continue to get stuck in icky bubble gum in the road, and when a truck is coming the animals chew and chew and blow a huge bubble to float away and out of the truck's way. It is a great story for acting out (which we did) and for remembering the events in the story and learning about sequencing.       

One of the Pre-K classes acting out the story. 

We then put the animals in the order that they got stuck on the board. 

Even though this type of lesson can be a little more challenging with our younger students, I feel like they really benefit from hands on reading lessons such as these. So at times it can be a little chaotic, but it is always fun!      

ABC Letters in the Library by Bonnie Farmer

Read to: Kinder 

Skills: Understanding Alphabetical order and how our library is organized.

With our Kinder classes we are beginning to prepare them for when they will be able to go out to the main library to find and checkout books. So we began learning about how our library is organized, and we focused on the fiction section of our library this week. We read, ABC Letters in the Library by Bonnie Farmer to review the alphabet and we watched a quick video and played a game to better understand alphabetical order. The kids seemed to catch on quickly, and I know they are excited to soon be able to head out to the "big library!" 

We're Going On a Book Hunt by Pat Miller

Read to: Kindergarten

Skills: Learning how to navigate the library   

In Kindergarten we continued discussing all that we need to know to get ready to go into the big library to check out books. We read this book because it is very interactive and has lots of movements and motions to help kids remember how they behave, and what they do when they are in the library. As you can see it is based off of the book, We're going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury, but this time it is the bears going on a book hunt. It discusses using shelf markers to mark our spot on the shelf when we are looking at a book, so that we know where it goes back, and how to choose "just right" books. It was fun acting out the story and hopefully it will help the kids remember key things when they are looking for and checking out library books.  

Goldilocks and Just One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson

Read to: First Grade

Skills: Fractured Fairy Tales 

 With first grade we reviewed what a fairy tale is and then discussed what a fractured fairy tale is, as they are currently learning about this in their classes. I decided to read this particular book with them because it is awesome! It is the story of a now grown up Baby Bear getting lost and "accidently" going into the now grown up Goldilock's apartment (In NYC). Of course, Baby Bear has no idea it is Goldilocks' apartment, but they soon discover each other and reconnect if you will. It is a great fractured fairy tale from a different point of view. After reading, it was fun for the kids to compare and contrast this story to the original one.       

Pecos Bill Invents the Ten-Gallon Hat by Kevin Strauss

Read to: Second Grade

Skills: Tall Tales  

Our second graders are currently learning all about Texas as well as tall tales, so I decided to share a tall tale with them with a Texas theme. We first learned all about what makes a tall tale and this story definitely fit the mold. I loved it because it was also about good old Pecos Bill and the ten gallon hat and at the end it gave a few facts about why cowboys wear some of the certain things that they do. A perfect book to read while the kids learn all about Texas!         

Little Red Hot by Eric A. Kimmel

Read to: Second Grade

Skills: Fractured Fairy Tale with a Texas Twist

The following week I couldn't resist sharing this book as well. Still in keeping with the second grade  Texas theme, I shared this fractured fairy tale. Essentially I did the same lesson with second grade as I did with the first graders with fractured fairy tales, but just used a different book. This is another great one to compare and contrast to the original story.        

3rd and 4th Graders cast their vote! 

Finally this week was Bluebonnet voting time for the third and fourth graders! Starting this fall the third and fourth graders had the opportunity to take part in the Texas Bluebonnet Award program.  This program, developed by the Texas State Library Association, encourages reading for pleasure for students in grades 3-6 in hopes to expose children to excellent writers across several genres. Twenty titles are nominated by Texas teachers and librarians with the ultimate winner chosen by students in January. In order to be eligible to vote students must read a minimum of five books out of the twenty titles. 

   

So this week we conducted our voting online and students voted for what book they felt should win the Texas Bluebonnet Award. The committee will announce the ultimate winner at the beginning of February and we can't wait to find out which book won. I will for sure keep you posted!

Here were some of our third and fourth grade students voting!