News From The Library--March 24, 2008

Mercy Watson To The Rescue
By Kate DiCamillo

A Video Book Review by Junia and Olive

Also in the Library this week.....

Kindergarten---shhhh......Kindergarteners worked on our "secret project" this week and did a fantastic job.

First Grade--Happy Birthday to one of our first graders this week and in honor of her birthday she donated Lady Bug Girl by Jacky Davis and David Soman to our Library. What a lovely story of a little girl who finds that she is as "big" as she wants to be and can become anything she wants.

Second Grade--Another wonderful birthday book donation 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joëlle Jolivet was read to the second graders this week. This charming story about the delivery of one penguin a day for a year weaves humor, math, and and awareness of global warming into a wonderful story.

Third Grade--It's always fun for me to introduce a classic to students and this week it was Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. After a brief introduction by way of a Keynote, students loved hearing the story of the "Radish Cure" and we had to have a drawing to determine who would be able to checkout our remaining Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. Good writing and a knowledge of what interests children is timeless and after sixty years, Betty MacDonald's Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stands the test of time.

Fourth Grade--This week we read our second tall tales--Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan retold by Steven Kellogg. Students enjoyed finding the characteristics of tall tales in each story and the wonderful illustrations added much to the experience. We are already beginning to plan our own tall tales.

Fifth Grade--Fifth graders missed library this week as they were on their adventure to the Catalina Island.

Sixth Grade--Sixth graders did a great job of posting a comment on our Library Skills Blog on the subject of "Digital Citizenship." They answered the question, "What does it mean to be a digital citizen?" Understanding their place in the virtual world is extremely important and thinking about their behavior online in an ethical manner will help them make difficult decisions not only now but in their futures. Their responses were thoughtful and open the door to more discussion of this important topic. To read what they posted, please go to The Library Skills Blog, to the post for March 10, 2008, and click on comments.

News From the Library--January 8, 2007

A New Year in the Library Has Begun!

We're back!! The Library was a busy place this week as classes began again after our nice Winter Break. Even though the sun in shining in Santa Barbara and pretty soon we might need to do some kind of rain dance, it was "chilly" in the Library for Kindergarteners and First Graders as we read penguin books this week.

Kindergarten--There were lots of chuckles as we read the story of Tacky The Penguin by Helen Lester. That Tacky!! He's an odd bird indeed. Finding the differences between Tacky and his companions was fun (a Hawaiian shirt on a penguin?) and his marching style is a little strange, but we all agreed that in the end when Tacky saves himself and his fellow penguins from the hunters, he was a good bird to have around. This humorous and fun story also gives a nice gentle lesson that being different can be something to be respected.

First Grade--Which Cinderella story has a glass flipper instead of a glass slipper? Cinderella Penguin by Janet Perlman. First graders had fun finding the similarities and differences in this version and the one they are more familiar with. As well as enjoying the story, it gave us the opportunity to begin a discussion of the literary element of plot.

Second Grade--We had fun learning about the parts of a book this week with an interactive Keynote presentation, complete with sound effects and quizzes. Using books from our own library, we located the cover, the spine, the table of contents, the index, and the glossary.

Third Grade--This week we started on our Cinderella Project. Over the next several weeks we'll read different versions of the Cinderella story as a way to discuss plot and theme as literary elements. We also get to see a multi-cultural snapshot of this famous story and find its enduring theme of the rewards of kindness and generosity. For our first stoy, we read Adelita by Tomie de Paola and found that instead of a glass slipper to help the prince find his Cinderella, it was a beautiful rebozo, and as always, in the end they "lived happily ever after."

Fourth Grade--Get out those scalpels! It's time to "Dissect a Book!" This week's skills lesson for fourth grade involved "taking apart" a non-fiction book in order to find the relevant information needed for a bibliography. With scalpels (pencils) in hand, they bravely found author's names, titles, publishing cities, publisher's names, and copyright dates. But one of their favorite parts was my story about my high school lab partner (fullback on the football team) who fainted when we dissected a frog in Biology lab!

Fifth and Sixth Grade--We are so lucky to have a new resource for research and with laptops in hand, the fifth and sixth graders were introduced to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, our new software subscription, which allows them access to three different versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica (elementary, middle school, and high school), plus a database of magazines and journals, and vetted websites for any topic. It is updated regularly--we checked the entry for Gerald Ford and James Brown and found they were current--and it's a wonderful, accurate, and safe place to do in depth research. Watch this week's Wednesday Word for information about how you can use this at home. This is now available to students and families 24 hours a day/7 days a week/ 365 days a year! It can be accessed from any computer--at home, in the classroom, or in the tech lab.

See you next week!