Friday, April 24, 2009

News From The Library--April 27, 2009

Congratulations to our Battle Team 2009!

On Thursday, April 23, our great group of fifth grade students attended the Santa Barbara County Battle of the Books at our County Schools Auditorium. These dedicated readers started reading the list of 30 books as early as last summer and then met in the Library every Tuesday at lunch since January to practice the Battle questions. Once at the Battle, they were put on teams with children from all over the Country of Santa Barbara and spent the morning "battling" away answering questions about the 30 books. Greg Trine, the author of one of the Battle Books--The Great Cape Caper--was on hand to ask the final Battle questions. This is such a great program to recognize our fantastic readers!

In the Library this week....

Kindergarten--Poor Mr. Greely---he dreams of planting a vegetable garden only to have it ravaged every night by three (very cute) little bunnies. Finally after building wall after wall and still finding the bunnies inside his garden, he realizes the best way to solve the problem was to not make it a problem at all and to share his bounty with the bunnies. Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming is not only fun, but a great way to introduce prepositions to kindergarteners.

First Grade--Henry had a messy room, a very messy room. It was so messy that when he finally decided to clean it, the news media came! When the fish, and the racoons, and the fleas, and even a green, scaly thing finally were cleaned out he at last had a clean room. But when he tried to sleep that night he found it too clean. Just when he was worried he never be able to be comfortable in his room again, he hears the window open and one by one his old friends return, each bring back a little of the mess until Henry is comfortable at last. The Day Henry Cleaned His Room by Sarah Wilson is a great read as first graders can really relate to Henry and his dilemma.

Second Grade and Third Grade--This week we had fun learning about reference books in our Library. After looking at each type of book, we played "Name That Book," a game designed in a Keynote presentation in which students are given clues about each of the different reference books and have to name the correct book. Then each student is given a "scenario" posing a reference question and they have to identify the book in which they would find the information needed.

Fourth Grade--no library this week due to assemblies

Fifth Grade--Fifth Grade played a more advanced version of "Name That Book" as a review of reference books.

Sixth Grade--Sixth graders started their research on a god or goddess this week. They learned how to use a social bookmarking site called del.icio.us in which I had posted websites they could use for their research. They will continue researching next week and then begin writing their blog post for the project they are doing in collaboration with art.

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