News From The Library--November 3, 2009

Happy Halloween in the Library!

It was a busy week at school with our Fall Sing and our Fall Festival so several classes didn't make it to the Library for their regularly scheduled times. Those who did were treated to a variety of Halloween stories. Our favorite for 5th grade is Duffy's Jacket by Bruce Coville, 4th graders heard Esteban and the Ghost by Sibyl Hancock, 3rd graders love One Halloween Night by Marc Teague, and 2nd graders chuckled along with Porkenstein by Kathryn Lasky and David Jarvis. Next week we'll be back at work with our regular schedule. Happy Halloween!

News From the Library--October 26, 2009

BibMe!

This week fifth and sixth graders used their "book dissections" from last week to enter information into an incredible time-saving web based applications called BibMe. (Where was this at 3 A.M. when I was typing bibliographies on a manual typewriter in the late sixties!) This program allows students to enter the information about books used in a report, then formats it into a bibliography that can be downloaded to Microsoft Word (if you register). All for free! It also has formats for all other types of media you might use in a report. We didn't register here in the Library but students practiced entering data and watching the bibliography appear. It even has a feature whereby you can enter a title, author, and/or ISBN number and it will find all the information about the book and then format it for you! I did, however, have students use the manual entry mode so they would know how to do that if the book couldn't be found using the auto mode. They actually enjoyed doing this but I must say they aren't nearly as impressed with this as I am. Maybe I should have made them hand write those bibliographies first???

Also in the Library this week...

Kindergarten--Kindergarten missed Library this week because of the Move-A-Thon.

First Grade--Two escaped convicts try to hide in a haunted house in Erica Silverman's fun story The Halloween House. As well as being delightful to read, it is a counting story and students loved joining in as we counted down from ten to none.

Second Grade--What can you do when your family wants to keep making your Halloween costume every year? In Susan Wojciechowski's book The Best Halloween of All, Ben takes us through a "photo" album of his past six Halloweens from being a clown to a bunch of grapes. He knows his family means well, but this year is going to be different as he designs and makes his own costume--not as elaborate as in past years--but best of all, his very own creation.

Third Grade--We had fun this week with a new Halloween book, Miss Smith and the Haunted Library by Michael Garland. I made a "book trailer" using animoto to introduce the book and then we read it. It was so much fun finding all the characters from other stories--the Headless Horseman, Captain Hook, the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, to name just a few. The illustrations are fantastic and there is even a little chart at the end explaining where all the characters came from.

Here's the book trailer:



We're planning to use animoto in the spring when students do projects for their book clubs.

Fourth Grade--Another new book this year is Halloween Night by Marjorie Dennis Murray and illustrated by Brandon Dorman. A take off on the Night Before Christmas this book delighted fourth graders with its creepy inhabitants and rhyming verse. And again, the illustrations are magnificent.

Fifth and Sixth Grade--see opening post.

News From The Library--October 27, 2008

Happy Halloween!

Kindergarteners loved hearing Erica Silverman's book Big Pumpkin. There's something really wonderful in seeingthe little guy save the day--a message that certainly resonates with this group! After a witch has planted a pumpkin, it grows so large that she can't get it off the vine and a series of characters try one at a time to pluck that pumpkin. "Drat!" says the witch as each one fails until the little bat comes up with a plan using teamwork. In the end they all get that pumpkin pie they crave and the witch plants another seed so they can do it again next year. Kindergarteners love the patterns and repetitions, and the great message of this story.

Also in the Library this week....

First Grade--First graders heard A Pumpkin Story by Mariko Shinju--one of the most charming little books I have ever read. It chronicles the story of a man who uses pumpkins for everything! He starts small with bowls and cups for pumpkin soup, moves on the furniture (a pumpkin bath tub???) and ends up building a town and a hotel--all of pumpkins! The illustrations are simple but delightful and students love this story.

Second Grade---Mrs. Seeple's class heard one of my favorites for this time of year--A Job for Wittilda by Caralyn Buehner. Poor Wittilda has 47 cats and no job....until she applies as the delivery person for Dingaling Pizza. To get the job, she has to win the delivery race but just as things are going swimmngly for her she finds a little kitten stuck in a tree. Should she rescue it now and risk losing the job or come back later? Of course she gets the kitten and amazingly the job, too. Now 48 cats enjoy pizza for dinner every night!

Third Grade--Lane Smith's new book Madame President was a big hit with the third graders this week. With its quirky illustrations and humorous text, this book is a great way to introduce the duties of the President of the United States.

Fourth Grade--As a follow up to our lesson on plagiarism last week, fourth graders learned how to cite the website they used for their endangered animals research. After a break next week for Halloween stories, they will write their paragraph and cite their source. Then when their art project is finished it will all be posted on our Research Blog.

Fifth Grade--Fifth graders synthesized their research on spiders into a Comic Life page. The assignment was to "be the spider" and they wrote a first person narrative using the facts they found. We had visitors that day from Apple Computer and several school districts and our guests were very impressed with the skill level and creativity of the fifth graders.

Sixth Grade--After writing a want ad for president, sixth graders moved on this week to writing a resume for either Barack Obama or John McCain. To keep things even, they drew their candidates name from a hat and then used a sheet of information from VoteSmart.org to compose a resume using a template from the software Pages. Although some were disappointed to pick the candidate they didn't think they would support, in the end they realized that it was important to research the other candidate if for no better reason than to convince them of their original choice.

News from The Library--October 29, 2007

How Spooky Should We Go?

Halloween stories are lots of fun. For the younger students we have stories of funny witches, and pumpkins, and costume contests. But for the older students there are several books with what are considered "scary stories." Is this valuable literature for children? The debate goes on. Some of the most read are the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series by Alvin Schwartz. While some of these are collections of tales from American folklore, personally I feel they may be a little intense, especially for children who are living in a world where the overall environment is more than a little frightening. Couple this with their exposure to the media and I have begun to wonder if reading scary stories is the right thing to emphasize on Halloween. So this year I spend the early weeks in October doing research with them on spiders and reading stories with a spider "theme." I liked this. Here we are, however, nearing Halloween and I admit I love reading those stories, but I have chosen stories for fourth, fifth and sixth grades that, while a little spooky, are somewhat humorous. I also chose them to illustrate the style of writing where a writer uses the length of sentences and the rhythm of sentences to create tension and mood so after we were done being "spooked" we "de-constructed" the scary part and looked at those literary devices. The story I read for fourth grade is a Spanish folktale Esteban and the Ghost by Sibyl Hancock. For fifth grade I read "Duffy's Jacket" by noted children's author Bruce Coville, and for sixth grade it's "The Surprise Guest" by none other than R.L. Stine.

Also in the library this week.....

Kindgergarten--Kindergarteners loved the rollicking rhyme of Room On the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffle. What happens when a witch lets too many passengers on her broom and it breaks? She has to face a scary dragon with half a broom, but her friends come to the rescue at the last minute. And her new broom? Well, let's just say it's the Mercedes of brooms!

First Grade--One of the worst things that could happen on Halloween is to have the wrong costume, and in Trick or Treat Smell My Feet by Diane Degroat, Gilbert and his sister accidentally switch costumes for their school's Halloween parade. To make matters worse, Gilbert has to wear the costume in the parade....a pink ballerina tutu! The best part of this story is how he handles it all with aplomb by dancing his way to the food table---a good lesson for us all!

Second Grade--Poor Dr. Smart Pig. He's all alone without a friend on Halloween since his brothers were eaten last year by the Big Bad Wolf. But since he's a scientist he comes up with an ingenious plan to create a friend. After a few missteps, he creates.....a monster pig who eats him out of house and home (literally). But when the Big Bad Wolf appears dressed as granny to trick or treat at his door, Porkenstein saves the day. His insatiable appetite actually comes in handy! Porkenstein is by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated with wonderful humor by David Jarvis.

Third Grade--Chris Van Allsburg is one of my favorite children's authors and I must say The Widow's Broom is my favorite of all his books. The story is mesmerizing and funny at the same time and the illustrations are exquisite. Third graders loved the twist at the end and got the subtle but powerful message that we should not judge without information.


Happy Halloween (and don't get spooked!)

News From the Library--October 22, 2007

Balancing Books and Laptops

It's very tempting when doing research to simply "google it" but this week in the library third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders found that when doing their spider research, a book was the best source of detailed information. After each team of students picked the name of a spider out of a hat, we started our research with our online encyclopedia. Some students found the answers to their research questions quickly, but others realized that the encyclopedia article was simply too general. The books about individual spiders that we have in our collection provided not only detailed information but had incredible illustrations and photographs as well. At the end of our hour, student agreed that the books were a better source for this kind of information and that they could trust that the information was accurate.

Just to make a final point I "googled" tarantula and showed the students that there were 1,390,000 web sites returned!!! Although the internet is a fantastic resource, it requires careful evaluation and quite a bit of time and patience to find the same information that was in the books. One of my goals this year is to provide students with a balance between books and computers and to help them understand that each "venue" of information has its unique and valuable characteristics.

Also in the Library this week...

Kindergarten--Kindergarteners are on the way to the pumpkin patch tomorrow so to get read ready we read Big Pumpkin, by Erica Silverman and S.D. Schindler. This delightful tale reads a little like This is the House That Jack Built, only this time it's a witch, a ghost, a goblin, a vampire, a mummy and a little bat all trying to get a huge pumpkin off the vine in order to make pumpkin pie. Great messages here too....the value of team work and the smallest might be the one with the solution to a large problem!

First Grade--We all remember the song "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." In Lucille Colandro's and Jared D. Lee's There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat the progression goes from a bat, to an owl, a cat, a ghost, a goblin, some bones, and a wizard until finally she shouts "Trick or Treat!" and ends with a burp! This delighted the first graders as you can well imagine.

Second Grade--One of my personal favorites for reading at Halloween is A Job for Wittilda, Caralyn Buehner and Mark Buehner's charming tale of a witch who has so many cats to feed she has to find a job. The perfect one? Delivering pizzas on her broom. The story is complemented with wonderful illustrations and the chance to find a spider on every page. There's even a little sub-story going on with a cat chasing a mouse at the bottom of each page. This book is always a hit with this age group and I never get tired of reading it.

Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth graders---see opening post.

Until next week.....

News From The Library--October 15, 2007

EEEK! Spiders in the Library!!!!

This week, in preparation for Halloween, we had lots of fun learning more about spiders. Thanks to a generous donation we now have a huge spider web on our window to go along with other spiders (and books about spiders) lurking in the library. Each class viewed a Keynote about spiders and then either heard a story with a spider as the main character or did a little online research about spiders.


Kindergarten--After viewing the Keynote, we read Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider. This classic picture book tells the story of a little spider who floats into a barn yard and begins to spin her web. As each farm animal entreats her to play, she doesn't answer. She's too busy spinning her web. The charming repetition continues until at the end she falls asleep (after catching a fly, of course). Repetition coupled with a simple narrative is an excellent way for pre-readers and early readers to learn to read and comprehend the flow of a narrative. But above all, Eric Carle's magnificent illustrations make this book one to read again and again.

First Grade--Poor Miss Spider....she is all set to have a tea party but one by one her invitations are greeted with fear and dread. Finally after saving a rain-soaked moth, her intentions are seen as only friendly and she has her tea party after all. We had lots of fun counting her eight legs and her eight tea cups, one for each leg. Miss Spider's Tea Party by David Kirk gave us the chance to compare what we had learned in the Keynote with the ideas in the story and in the end we agreed most spiders aren't that scary at all!

Second Grade--While they were viewing the Keynote, second graders had a great time telling me what they were learning in their classroom about spiders...especially that they are called arachnids! We read Diane Cronin's hilarious Diary of a Spider and our favorite part was the Vacuum Drill. Stop, Drop from the web, and Run like crazy. This really tickled their funnybones.

Third Grade--After viewing the Keynote, we read our wonderful adaptation of Mary Howitt's 1829 cautionary poem The Spider and the Fly. Third graders loved the spooky illustrations by award winning artist Tony Di Terlizzi. Set on black paper with white lines, the drawings have the feeling of a silent movie and the spider, complete with a pencil thin mustache, does make a wonderful villain. The unfortunate demise of the fly serves as a little lesson on the results of falling for flattery, and in one of the best features of the book the villainous spider gets his own special afterword. There he is, sitting at the table, wiping his mouth delicately with a napkin and looking full, while the fly's pretty little hat rests on the plate in front of him. As he points out that all spiders are trappers, even the beloved Charlotte from E.B. White's classic book, we had to sadly agree that the fly should have known better!

Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade--We set up our online version of Encyclopedia Britannica on their laptops this week and they had time to do a little exploration (including a look at spiders, or course). Next week, we'll be doing more research on spiders using both books from our collection and the online encyclopedia. Mr. Orr's class did the set up last week, so this week they heard Jane Yolen's interesting book Encounter which tells the story of Columbus' arrival from the viewpoint of a Taino Indian boy. This is an interesting way to discuss different views of history as well as the literary device point of view.

See you next week!