Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It is officially 2017 and I am just getting a chance to sit down and blog a little about our school year so far! Oops! To my defense I have been a little behind this year because I was gone on maternity leave for the first couple weeks of school, but I am back and ready to blog again about what is happening in the library!

We got off to a smooth start, and have just been a tad behind with our usual lessons and programs. Our theme this year is Superheroes, and we are encouraging the students to be superheroes and read, read, read! Like last year we are having our youngest students (Pre-K-2nd) participate in the Texas 2x2 Reading Program, and we are having our older students (3rd-4th) graders participate in the Texas Bluebonnet Reading Program. Even though the 2x2 program is not a program in which a book from the list wins an award, at our school we encourage everyone to read at least 5 books from the list, and we read some out loud too, so then our students can participate in our very own election and vote for their favorite. On the other hand, the Bluebonnet program does require students to read at least 5 books from the list in order to be eligible to vote, and the winning book will win the distinguished Bluebonnet Award. Thousands of kids across Texas in 3rd-6th grade will be voting in January so we will be doing the same when we get back to school!

Here are some of our bulletin boards with our theme this year and how we are motivating our students to read 5 or more books from their list.    

 

 

 

 Texas 2x2 Wall

 

Texas Bluebonnet Wall 

On each of these walls the kids are checking off and keeping track of which 2x2 or Bluebonnet books they have read or had read to them. With our youngest students we are reading the 2x2 books together in library and coloring in the book on their class' boot. We are almost to 5 books!

  

 

We are also encouraging kids to go above and beyond just the minimum of 5 books. If students read or listen to ALL 20 2x2 books then they earn a superhero badge. Or if they are in 3rd or 4th grade and they read 10 or more, they earn the badge. 

Here is what the badge looks like close up.  The students sign their name and write what superpower reading gives them. 

Students and teachers are also being encouraged to read the books and write a review to tell others about a great book from the list. They can fill out 1 of these forms and if they do students can choose a prize at the end of the month.

 

Here are the teachers who are currently helping to promote books from the lists! 

   

 These pictures and reviews are posted in the breezeway to our Lower School and Preschool, so all who walk through can see it.  I am thankful for these teachers as they have done a super job of encouraging our kids (and families) to read these books as well!

As we begin 2017, and head into our second semester of school, we will vote for our favorite books from the list. I am then planning on possibly doing a genre challenge for the 2nd part of the year. We did this last year and had mediocre participation, so I plan to switch it up a little to see if I can get more kids to take part this year! If you have any ideas send them my way!

Cheers to 2017 and the many more adventures we plan to have in the library!        

     

Library Lessons Lately

Wow! It is already 2016 and I am just now able to blog again. I guess that means we have been busy in the library! So much has happened since I last wrote. We have been doing some super fun new lessons, and our kids have been reading like crazy as we wrapped up our 2x2 and Bluebonnet programs in January.  I'll first tell you about some of the lessons we have done and then I'll share the outcomes of our reading programs!

CDC, Pre-K, and Kindergarten lessons:

We began seeing our CDC Multi-age class in the library mid fall. This is our mixed class of 3 and 4 year olds so many of the lessons I have done with them have been interactive. I know they can't sit for very long so I try to have them moving and participating with the story as much as possible. I have also done many of these same lessons with my Pre-K and Kinder kids and they have enjoyed them as well.

My Little Sister Ate One Hare by Bill Grossman

This story is a counting book and also a great story for practicing sequencing events. The little sister eats 9 crazy different animals and insects and then when she eats something normal and healthy (10 Peas) she throws up! After reading the story I handed out pictures of all of the items she ate and the kids had to come and put them in the little sister's mouth (a brown bag) in the order that she ate them.  

Arlo Rolled by Susan Pearson  

The previous lesson inspired me to do a lesson where the main characters were peas. So that is when I came upon the next two books that I read together. 

Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

In Little Pea, Little Pea's main problem is that he hates having to eat his dinner which is...candy! However, after eating a few bites like his parents insist he finally gets dessert, which is of course, Spinach! The kids get a big kick out of that for sure!

In Arlo Rolled, Arlo is a pea who wants to get out of his garden and see the world. He avoids a lot of animals and insects along the way who may want to eat him and he eventually has a family (pea pod) of his own. I wrapped up these two fun stories with the Five Fat Peas finger rhyme, which was a good way to end this story time.                  

Ding Dong Gorilla by Michelle Robinson

Hi! Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter

In both of these stories the characters are waiting on a pizza, which is another crowd pleasing topic. In Ding Dong Gorilla, the main character is a little boy that claims that a gorilla came to his door to deliver the pizza and then of course proceeded to destroy the house, and eat the pizza! 

In Hi, Pizza Man! the little girl wonders what would happen if things, other than the pizza man, came to deliver the pizza. 

After reading these two stories I handed out a picture of a door and the kids drew something that they could imagine coming to the door and delivering a pizza to them. Some kids drew a character from one of the stories or something totally new!           

Hug Machine by Scott Campbell

A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead

Our theme at our school this year is Compassion, so I decided to share these two stories to introduce and discuss this topic. Hug Machine was one of the books on this year's Texas 2x2 Reading List, and of course, A Sick Day For Amos McGee is one of my favorites. Both of these stories have characters demonstrating acts of kindness and thinking of others. After reading we brainstormed ideas of how we might be able to show compassion to our friends.      

Primer, First Grade, and Second Grade:

 

The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf by Mark Teague 

First grade was doing a unit on Fables and Fairy Tales so I thought it was a good opportunity to discuss this genre with several of the classes and also explain and read an example of what a Fractured Fairy Tale is. I think I have read this story before, but it is a great one to compare and contrast to the original story.   

First grade was also recently completing a mystery unit so they asked me to introduce this genre to the classes.  I used this mystery lesson story map last year, and the teachers really liked it so I did it again, but with a different story. I found this mystery vocabulary and story map on Scholastic's website and it is a great introduction to the genre. For our lesson we first went over some of the key vocabulary, and story elements to look and listen for, and then I read the story, Miss Nelson is Missing. I encouraged the kids to fill out the story map on their own while I was reading the story as best they could, but then after reading the story we filled out as much as we could together. They planned to continue this lesson in their classes so really it was just a brief introduction.         

Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard

Third Grade: 

The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant

Third Grade was also recently doing a unit on Realistic Fiction, so they asked me to discuss this with the classes and read some examples. I also set some books out so the kids could see the wide variety of books that can fall under this genre, but I chose to read one of my very favorites out loud, The Relatives Came.  I LOVED this book growing up, maybe mostly because of the pictures, but I also thought it was a great example of realistic fiction to share,  and the kids really liked it too.          

Fourth Grade: 

 

Mae Jemison by Jodie Shepherd

Fourth Grade is currently working on their yearly Biography research paper. This is a big project where certain research skills such as note taking, writing an organized research paper, and creating citations are introduced. Much of this project is possible due to the collaborations between the Fourth Grade team and myself. In one of our meetings we discussed that the students sometimes struggle with the concept of understanding what makes the person they are researching significant? That can sometimes be a tough question for a Fourth grader to answer, so in class we discussed this concept. Together we read a very short Rookie Biography about Mae Jemison. We brainstormed synonyms for the word significant, and after reading we discussed and wrote what truly made Mae Jemison significant.

         

Reading Programs: 

Posters for books 

Book reviews

"Wanted" Wall

As a stated in a previous post, our Pre-K through 2nd Graders this fall worked on reading the Texas 2X2 Books and our 3rd and 4th Graders read the Texas Bluebonnet books. They worked so hard as you can see above. We had a ton of kids promote books by writing reviews or creating posters for books, and just look at our Wanted Wall! These were the students that read 10 books and if and when they read all 20, they would earn a sheriff's badge on their picture. We almost didn't have enough room for all of the kids who achieved this goal! 

 In January we held our annual election where the kids could vote for their favorite book depending on the program they participated in. The winning books will be announced soon, and I plan to announce it officially to the kids, so I will be sure to report the results! I enjoyed that we included the entire Pre-School and Lower school in these reading programs this year, and I really think the kids had a blast and enjoyed the books.  Currently for the spring we are starting to introduce a new reading challenge so I will be sure to let you know about that once it is underway.    

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!  

      

  

Last Few Weeks of School

I can't believe this school year is coming to an end. Here is what we were up to during our last couple of weeks in May.

We started off the month celebrating Free Comic Book Day and May 4th which is "Star Wars Day." "May the 4th be With You!" So we thought it was a great time to discuss the genre of graphic novels. So many of our kids LOVE and are OBSESSED with graphic novels, but others may not really understand them or realize all of the cool learning opportunities that they hold! So Mrs. Young, our LS graphic novel expert, did a lesson with our 1st-4th graders on the subject.  The kids loved it and we all (including me) learned a lot!             

Duck & Goose Go to the Beach by Tad Hills

Flip Flop Bop by Matt Novak

Read to: CDC and Pre-K

Skills: Summer Fun!

With Summer on our brain I decided to read these two fun books about going to the beach and what you might wear to the beach, Flip Flops! The kids had fun and lots of them told me about beach trips that they had gone on or were planning to go on this summer. After reading, they then decorated and designed their very own pair of flip flops. I saw some very creative pairs of shoes that I sure would love to wear this summer!

Chalk by Bill Thomson

Doodleday by Ross Collins

Read to: Kinder and Primer

Skills: Focusing on the problem and solution in each story and comparing and contrasting the two stories. 

These two books were so fun to read! Both of these books have been around awhile, but they are all about drawings coming alive whether by magical chalk or if it is a day called, Doodleday! Both of the stories also have very clear problems that kids can easily identify, but the solutions are different so I of course wanted to emphasize that if the kids didn't catch it first. After reading both I had the kids draw something that if it came alive it would cause a problem. Then they had to exchange papers with a friend and each person then had a draw something that could solve their problem. They had fun! The next time I saw these classes so many of them asked, "Is today Doodleday?" Ha!         

It's Okay to Make Mistakes by Todd Parr 

The OK Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Read to: CDC, Pre-K, Kinder

Skills: Understanding that it is ok to be ok!

I was reintroduced to The Ok Book at a recent seminar I went to and we just happened to get Todd Parr's book It's Okay to Make Mistakes this year, so I wanted to share them with the kids at the same time. Our lesson was all about discussing mistakes we may have made and how we fixed them, as well as talking about things we are just ok at. I then found a fun activity page that kids could write or draw about something they are just ok at. Afterwards each of the classes made a class Ok book of their own.    

TumbleBook Library 

Shared with Pre-K and Kinder

The last week of school I shared this cool resource with our Pre-K and Kinder students if they want to do some reading over the summer, but don't have time to go to the library. It is called, Tumblebooks, and it is an online collection of animated books. We provide this database for our students so I wanted to be sure they knew about it. I have taught all of our other students about it, but just now had a chance to share it with our youngest ones.   

While I taught our youngest students about Tumblebooks,  I reviewed how to access our ebook collection with the 1st through 4th graders. 

Dog vs Cat by Chris Gall

This Book Just Ate My Dog by Richard Byrne

Read to: First Grade

I have been dying to read all of the below books with the classes because they are just fun books! With first grade we had a pet themed story time. The kids love all books by Chris Gall, and so they were excited about this newer one.  For the Richard Byrne book, every time I read it the kids would ask at the end, "So, did that book REALLY eat her dog? Looks that way! It is so funny how serious they get about it all!    

This is a Moose by Richard T. Morris 

Read to: 2nd and 3rd Grade

This is a Moose was another just plain silly read aloud. I love it when I can get the crowd rolling with a funny book! I won't spill the beans on why this book is so great but it is definitely one to check out this summer if you haven't read it. 

The Book With No Pictures by B.J Novak 

Audio book played for: 3rd and 4th Grade

And finally, The Book With No Pictures! This book has been out for a while, but we just purchased the audio book of it where B.J. Novak reads the book. I mean what is better than hearing the author read his own book? So, I played it for the 3rd and 4th graders and they loved it, even if they had heard it several times before.  

So we wrapped up this school year with some great read-alouds and activities. All in all it was a super ending to a super year. I hope you all have a great summer and read some fantastic books!      

Poetry Month Part 2

For the rest of poetry month we did some more cool activities so here is what we were up to in a nutshell.

Secret Pizza Party by Adam Rubin

Nothing Beats a Pizza by Loris Lesynski 

A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky 

All three read to: Kinder

Skills/Theme: Pizza Poetry!

I think we can pretty much agree that most of us enjoy eating pizza, so I decided to do a pizza themed story time with of course including some poetry all about pizza. We first read, Secret Pizza Party by Adam Rubin which most of the kids already knew and loved (it is one of my favorite's too), and then I chose a couple of fun poems about pizza to share from each of the poetry books above.  We all had a pizzariffic time!      

Riddle Rhymes by Charles Ghigna

Simms Taback's Great Big Book of Spacey Snakey Buggy Riddles by Simms Taback, Katy Hall, and Lisa Eisenberg 

Read to: Primer, 1st, and 2nd Grade

Skills: Riddles

With Primer, First, and Second grades we learned about riddles! I picked riddles from each of the above books and as I read them, I made it fun for the kids by not showing them the pictures. They then had to guess what I was describing. I have to say they were really good at guessing way before I had given them all of the details! I am not sure I was that quick at their age. However, then they had a chance to write their own riddle and exchange it with a friend, so each of them could guess what was being described. They came up with some great adjectives to describe their objects.     

Laugh-eteria by Douglas Florian

And just for fun and if time allowed I shared a couple of poems from this book with some of the classes because well, it is funny, and I enjoy all of Douglas Florian's poems! 

"I Am" Poems

Completed With the Third and Fourth Grade Classes

With Third and Fourth Grade we learned about and wrote "I Am" poems. Basically it is a poem about yourself, but instead of having to think about what to write you pretty much just fill in the blanks with adjectives that describe yourself. Pretty fun! I originally had wanted to turn this lesson into a selfie poem and thought it would be fun if the kids took a picture of themselves to include with their poem,  but I wasn't sure how to go about it and the thought of printing out all of the pictures did not seem appealing or Earth friendly so we kept it simple.          

Finally, this past Thursday, April 30th,  was National "Poem in Your Pocket Day!" I really talked it up this year and I was so pleased with the number of kids and adults that came to the library or stopped me to share their poems. One first grade class had even constructed paper pockets and had a wide variety of poems to choose from in their "pockets" to share! Here was the poem I had in my pocket. I shared it with anyone who would listen!

Overall, it was a super way to end a great Poetry Month!