Sunday, March 11, 2007

One Happy Bookworm!

One Happy Bookworm!

Our Bookworm Club has been a rousing success this year with first and second graders eagerly "devouring" our early reader books. Over the last few weeks, several bookworms have completed the first of their reading logs, proudly finishing 18 books. In addition to reading the books, the club fosters the skills of checking out books at the right level for reading with pleasure, practicing fluency, checking out and returning library books, and just the joy of reading! Keep on reading, bookworms!


Also in the Library this week....


Kindergarten--Bear's New Friend is the delightful sequel to Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Bear wakes up from his long winter's nap and wants to play. Whooo is that new friend he discovers?

First, Second and Third Grades--At last it was voting day!! After hearing our final selection Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, primary students cast their ballots for their favorite among the nominees for the California Young Reader Medal Award. We are eagerly awaiting the results after all the votes are counted. (Mrs. Villa's class will vote this coming Tuesday. Sorry I missed your class last week but I was called for jury duty)

Fourth Grade--Fourth graders went on a "scavenger hunt" in the library this week. After breaking into teams of two, they were given slips of paper with call numbers. They had to figure out if the book was fiction, non-fiction, or a picture book and then locate the book as quickly as possible. And the librarian would only answer questions with "yes or no" if help was needed. So, "Where is this book anyway?" wouldn't work, but, "Is this book in the non-fiction section?" would do the trick.

Fifth Grade--Fifth grade played a rousing game of "Library Jeopardy" this week. And I shared with them an interesting insight I had. I designed our Jeopardy game about six years ago. I used note cards with the questions and answers for me to read, and sheets of paper with the categories printed on them and taped on the library cupboards. At the beginning of this year I decided to make a "high-tech" version on my laptop and project it with my projector. After playing it once that way, I realized we had a lot more fun and it actually worked better to do it the "low tech" way. A good lesson for all of us. Although we love those laptops, sometimes the "old" way just works better. Technology is wonderful, but it isn't always the best way to do something.

Sixth Grade--We started a multi-week lesson on Research which will culminate with the students posting their work on a new blog set up just for them. If you'd like to see the lesson, go to our Library Skills Blog and follow along. We are slowing down a bit for this and taking our time to really do the research and understand the different kinds of resources and the values of each one. Then we'll learn how to make a blog post, and comment on each other's work. Stay tuned....

A special thank you, to parents Rachel Moore and Nancy Eaton and all the parent volunteers who put on a spectacular Book Fair this week. And special thanks to the families who bought all those wonderful new books for our Library.







1 comment:

janet reid said...

Thanks for your comment! I do have a curriculum and if you go to my web page (there's a link on the right hand side) you will find it under "Skills at a Glance." I use this as a framework and then add new things each year. Our 1:1 laptop program is new this year and you'll find those lessons on the Skills Blog.