News From the Library--November 10, 2008

Dissecting A Book

With scalpel (pencils) ready, fifth graders "dissected" some non-fiction books this week in order to learn how to find the information needed for a bibliography. With concerns about plagiarism increasing, knowing how to cite your sources has become an important skill. Students were given two books and they needed to dissect or find the title, author, publisher, publishing city, and copyright date. Next week, we'll use an online bibliography maker Citation Machine. (I wish that had been available when I wrote bibliographies...usually very late at night!)

Also in the Library this week....

Kindergarten--Time for a classic fairy tale this week and kindergarteners were transfixed by James Marshall's version of Red Riding Hood. I am always amazed how these classic tales capture children's attention even in this time of television, movies, and internet. We also talked about the fact that many of these tales were told to teach children an idea and everyone agreed that the moral of this tale was "Don't Talk to Strangers!"

First Grade--Keiko Kaska's My Lucky Day is the delightful story of a wily pig who outfoxes the fox and instead of being eaten for dinner gets the fox to give him a bath, dinner, dessert, and....a massage! First graders had a great time predicting who the pig was going to outwit next.

Second Grade--Do you ever wonder what your dog does when you go out? In Linda Bailey's Stanley's Party, Stanley the dog takes some tentative steps beginning with sitting on the couch but things progress until he has all the dogs in the neighborhood over for a wild party....on the one night his family comes home early! According to the author, dogs around the world are still talking about that party!

Third Grade--We played a rousing game of Name That Book and third graders are becoming very familiar with our reference materials--atlases, encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, and thesauruses. At the end of our game I gave each student a scenario and they told me in which book they would find the necessary information.

Fourth Grade--We started writing our paragraph on an endangered animal this week. After doing research, students are going to write a paragraph to go with a photo of their endangered animal art project. Writing a topic sentence was our task for today and it's not easy to find that perfect hook and introduction to the topic. Next week we'll continue working on the body of the paragraph.

Fifth Grade--See opening post

Sixth Grade--We wrapped up our unit on the presidential elections by having groups explain why the candidate for which they wrote a resume would be the best for the job as president. A lively debate followed and we finished with a "straw vote." The results: Obama in the lead by 7 votes!