March Technology Mania

Phew! March was a busy time spent honing our technology skills and practicing good computer posture habits at all grade levels. Their library media specialist turned into Coach Posture who dispensed personalized posture tips and ergonomic advice. In the earlier part of the month, Grades 3-5 got savvy with the technology tools and features used in the online test module of MCAS. K-2 began the month using their ABC knowledge to hunt in NASA's online picture dictionary. All around, our super sleuthing skills were in sharp focus! 

Grades 3-5
Our MCAS technology scavenger hunt opened the month's lessons and got everyone figuring out all the buttons and test elements that are built in to the site. Instead of working to solve the problem at hand or read the selected passages to answer the question, students were on a mission to understand how to use the features built in to the online test. Working in small groups to locate the parts of the test where certain tools are useful and why they are important, the students reported back on their findings at the end of the class.

Later on in March, we highlighted the importance of posture and emphasized good hand position on the keyboard  to improve our typing. We watched a video to open a conversation about our posture

and students learned about bad habits we adapt while sitting at the computer (these include sitting like a turtle, diving into the computer, and using zombie arms - or chicken wings - to type). But we learned some simple tips to immediately improve our posture (putting both feet flat on the floor, sitting up flat against our chair, keeping neutral wrists, and adjusting our computer screens).

We practiced our good posture while using typingclub.com and took stretching breaks to check in with our bodies and readjust our posture.

Grades K-2

It's never too early to start learning good posture habits - that's what our youngest computer sleuths learned and practiced throughout the month. Our youngest classes got practice in correcting bad computer postures in this video before turning their attention to how they were sitting in front of their computers.

In our earlier library lesson, our students created their own picture dictionary entries after navigating through the NASA's Online Picture Dictionary. From Asteroids to Zarya, they showed they could look up a word from the site to draw their own visual definition.

Later in the month, we had loads of fun playing Alphamunchies, a game designed to help us learn to locate letters on the keyboard. Alpha Critters fall from the sky and kids must stop the Critters from hitting the ground and eating their food by typing the correct letters.

Your posture coaches are hoping you'll keep up your good posture habits by practicing more at home and at school. Over and out, library detectives!

February Fun in the Libraries

Though February is the shortest month of the year - made even shorter by all those snow days and the vacation week! - we still packed in a lot of fun to our library lessons!

The general theme for the month was Nonfiction, as we spent a good amount of time in January talking about Fiction and its elements. However, we still made room for some fun read-alouds!

K-2nd Grade

The younger grades celebrated World Read Aloud Day (February 16th) by working on pieces of art depicting their favorite scenes from a story. Some classes read works by our favorite author, Jacqueline Woodson; other classes listened to Chicken Big by Keith Graves. To spice things up, some classes were able to check out TumbleBooks - an amazing resource hosted by the Stevens Memorial Library. Did you know there's an entire online library of books - chapter books, as well as picture books that can be read to you - available to you 24/7, as long as you've got your Stevens Library card? It's an awesome website, perfect for hosting your own storytimes at home!

Click here to find the TumbleBook library in the Stevens Online Databases!

The art the students made after reading the stories is being turned into story quilts that will be displayed in Central Office - here's a sneak peek at what they'll look like!

We also did some work with KWL Charts. KWL stands for "Know/Want (or Wonder)/Learned". The chart is a way for kids to organize their information, and to visually represent the learning they do when they read a work of nonfiction. 

We practiced with nonfiction books, and we noticed that it was a whole lot easier to come up with things we wondered about than things we knew about certain topics! It was fun to see our "Learned" columns fill up after reading nonfiction titles! 

3-4th Grade

The 3rd and 4th graders started discussing the ways in which they can develop their own research topics from essential questions. We talked about Pre-Search - a similar concept to our "what I know" column for the younger kiddos - and how it's important to brainstorm everything you already know about a topic as a guideline for discovering new information. From one essential question about animals and camouflage, students were asked to use the Encyclopedias (the book ones!) to look up the keywords they brainstormed in order to find more information about the topic. Finally, they were asked to develop Thick and Thin Research Questions. A thick research question is robust, requiring a lot of in-depth research. A thin question is a question that can be easily answered in a few words. We talked about why those questions might be helpful in our research. During one class, students were so engrossed in the research and question-writing that they didn't realize a full hour had passed! 

Sharing resources, brainstorming, and researching using the encyclopedias! 

5th Grade

The 5th graders started a discussion on Evaluating Sources of information. One lesson focused in on evaluating text/book sources. We talked about how you need to really look over a book before you decide it's going to be helpful for your research. Things like age, condition, illustrations/images and readability all play a role in determining if a source is the best possible source for use in projects. We worked in groups to evaluate three different books to determine which would be the most helpful to us in a project. It was a hit! 

In our discussion surrounding the Evaluation of Websites (which can be significantly trickier!) we talked about what might be the most memorable acronym to ever appear in the library curriculum: The F.A.R.T Test! 

This acronym is helpful for everyone who goes on the internet - kids and grownups! 

We put a few websites to the test - specifically, a fake website about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

That's all for now, library detectives!

New Year Fun in the Libraries

Happy 2017, North Andover! This is shaping up to be a great year for our school libraries, as we re-focus on our book collections after a month of coding fun. We split the month into two sections, both devoted to promoting our fiction collections.

Grades K-1

Our youngest library friends spent some time talking about what makes a book a work of Fiction. We talked about how fiction usually has illustrations (as opposed to photographs), characters, and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. We read an example of a fiction story, like the one featured below!

Click here to find this in the MVLC catalog!

Then we worked on identifying whether or not books were fiction or something else in small groups!

Grades 2-3

Second and third graders were tasked with creating Story Maps of different stories. We talked about how almost every fictional story has these five elements: Title, Setting, Characters, "Problem", and "Solution". Once you can dissect a story into those five parts, it's easier to read & understand...and to write your own stories, too! We read a short story together and then students worked in pairs to read and analyze picture books. Some were pretty tricky!

Mrs. Ahearn liked sharing a story from In A Dark, Dark Room for this lesson.

Click here to find this in the Stevens Library catalog!

Grades 4-5

Fifth graders mapped out stories using a Plot Diagram worksheet in Google Classroom. We talked about how plots of fiction stories have a "rising action"/problem and a "falling action"/solution, as well as a climax (the most exciting part, where the story takes a sharp turn), a beginning and an end.

The students worked in pairs on the computers to complete plot diagrams for different picture books. 

Book Tasting!

By far the most exciting part of studying fiction has been our Book Tastings! The librarians created a "menu" for kids to sample parts of the library fiction collections that students might not otherwise have tried. Every class had a selection of books that were developmentally appropriate served as "courses" during the tasting. Kids got a book, analyzed the cover, read a few pages, and then decided if it was a book they might someday like to try. The idea being that every child would leave the library with a list of books that they could try out when next they had library check-out time.

Because we librarians like to make things fun, our book tastings were complete with music, table cloths, candles, trays - the works!

That's all for now, Library Detectives!

October Library Delights

Can you believe it's almost Thanksgiving?! Where is the time going? Well, I guess we should expect to feel like the time's flying by when we're having so much fun in the libraries! Here's what we've been up to:

All six grades in all five schools have been talking about how to find books in the library. Since our library instruction in North Andover has been a bit scattered over the years, we thought it best to try and get everyone on the same page, regardless of age. Plus, it's really important for our older grades to be really confident library users, as they will be asked to independently access library information in middle school!

Grades K-1

We've been going over the rules of the library with the younger grades, and making sure they understand how a library works. The "No No Never Box" from last year made another appearance, demonstrating to kids what kinds of things they should keep away from their library books when they bring them home. We read The Pigeon Needs a Bath by Mo Willems, and talked about how the pigeon should definitely not read his library book while he's so dirty!

Click to find this in the MVLC catalog!

 We also talked about the Parts of a Book, and made sure to learn about barcodes.

We've also been talking a lot about finding books in the library, and how we choose our books when we visit the library. Kids tend to choose books impulsively, and they do not always take the time to figure out what the book is about for themselves if they're a pre-reader, so we practiced some of those very important skills.

Grade 2

Our second graders built upon skills they learned last year this month, and we reinforced some of the learning happening in the classroom around Just Right Books. We used the document camera and the projector to practice the Five Finger Rule for determining if a book is "just right". In many classes we were able to watch this short, informative, kid-made video all about the concept:

We also talked a bit about putting the books in ABC Order. First, we tried organizing ourselves into ABC order by last name totally silently and it was really hard! We talked about why organization in a library is important, and why it's helpful to have books organized by the author's last name. Then, we broke up into groups and sorted piles of books into ABC order. 

If your second grader is interested in extra practice, check out Mrs. Lodge's Library's Shelving Game - it's excellent practice! Hopefully we'll get a chance to try this out with more classes.

Grades 3-5

We spent a good amount of time in the older grades going over some basic library skills, since these students have only had sporadic library instruction at the elementary level. As the library media specialists have noticed that some kids are still confused by Fiction and Nonfiction, we spent some time talking and brainstorming in groups about the similarities and differences of each, and what makes a book one or the other. It was a lot of fun!

We've also been talking about searching our library catalog (did you know you can do this from home?!). We make sure to start our searching with a keyword - the most important word in our search - checking the call numbers to see if the book is fiction or nonfiction - and checking to make sure the book is available before finding it on the shelf. 

Some kids liked it so much they wrote a story about it - how cool is that?

Throughout it all, we've been talking a lot about the One Author, One Community project and Jacqueline Woodson's visit. You can check out information about her visit here: 1a1c.northandoverpublicschools.com. All our elementary libraries, as well as the Stevens Library, have copies of her books for kids to read and share!

That's all for now, library detectives! See you soon!

Happy New Year, and a December Review!

Happy 2016, NAPS library fans! I can't believe we're already in a brand-new year!

Last month, we completely switched my library schedule in order to free up more time with other classes that aren't scheduled for "check-out time" on the day I'm at each school - with the exception of Kittredge, where I get to see every class already! This change has been amazing - it has allowed me to visit with more classes, and as the year progresses, I'll be able to develop library lessons catered to each grade and their learning objectives.

The Hour of Code!

December was mostly all about chromebooks - for some classes, using the chromebooks during a "library instruction" block was the very first time they'd had a chance to log in, which is awesome! We hosted approximately 42 Hours of Code across all five elementary schools, which means that over 1,000 elementary school students experienced their first taste of computer science instruction! 

@NAPS_Librarian add my 5 and we have 42 classes. That's over 1000 NAPS elementary students who did #hourofcode these 2 weeks!!!

— Kara Larcome (@KaraLarcome) December 22, 2015

Pretty neat, huh?

We are still analyzing the exit ticket data we collected from the Hour of Code, but here's a snapshot of how the kids felt during the process - the larger the word is, the more often kids used it in their description of how they felt during the Hour of Code:

So glad our students are feeling mostly "happy and excited" about computer science!

Other Library Activities 

This month, I also had a chance to share some very fun stories with the younger grades, including my all-time favorite winter-themed picture book, Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett.

Click on the picture to find this book in the Stevens Memorial Library catalog!

This cozy read is all about the virtues of being a kind and giving person - and Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen make a truly remarkable team. The pictures tell as much of the story as the words do, and the ending leaves lots of room for creative discussion and literary exploration.

Up Next: databases, using our reference books, computer science, and an exciting project for the 5th Graders! 

NAPS and the "Hour of Code"

Have you heard about the Hour of Code initiative? It's a world-wide movement to attempt to get as many students as possible learning how to code, and it. is. AWESOME!

The idea is that kids spend one hour playing online games provided by Code.org that teach basic coding and computing skills - things like Javascript, commands, etc. These kinds of skills will be absolutely essential in the future, for almost any kind of job in any field. It's important that we give our students a leg-up on the tools they'll need to be successful as 21st century learners.

We have about 21 elementary-age classes across the district signed up to do the Hour of Code, with more being added every day. The great thing is, even though this week is the official Hour of Code Week, the tutorials are up all year round!

Is this something you can try at home? YES!

Head on over to code.org/learn to explore all the different tutorials! For K-2, we recommend starting with Lightbot  - it's a very basic game with easy-to-follow instructions. For the older grades, we're working either with the Star Wars or the Frozen games, which teach kids about commands and coding using drag-and-drop boxes (the way freshmen in college learn!).

We'll be attempting to bring more technology to the library program this year, and I hope part of that is that each student in the district has a chance to try a bit of coding for themselves!

We're "Thankful" for November Library Lessons

Hey there, library detectives! We're more than half-way through November, and there's a ton of exciting stuff going on in the school libraries! Over the next few weeks, the grade level lessons will start to change as we get into more grade-specific library learning, but for now we're still making sure that all the grades have the basic foundational knowledge to help them move forward in their learning.

Kindergarteners

The kindergarteners have continued to learn about the basics of books and the library, and we've started to try and coordinate the books we read in library with what's happening in the classroom. In a few kindergarten classes, that's meant talking about what Being an Author means - what is their job? Can anyone be an author? Our first author was Marc Brown, and we read one of his Arthur books!

Click on the image to see this title in the Stevens Memorial Library catalog!

I've mentioned this to a few classes, but! I'm hoping to encourage more kid-author work by letting students know that any book that they write themselves (using a craft book, or even just paper and some staples!) can be put into our libraries. If you know of any kid-authors that would appreciate having their book in an actual library, let them know about this great opportunity!

In some kindergarten classes, they've been talking about animal habitats and informational books. In those classes, we've read an example of Fiction and one Informational Book all about animals!

Younger Grades (K-2)

In the younger grades, we've been talking a lot about what happens in the library - but we haven't talked too much about what happens when you take your books home. It's important to be explicit about the expectations we have about the care and treatment of our library books.

The "NO NO NEVER" Box

Note: this isn't our exact box - ours is a little less "piratical"! 

The "No No Never" box is full of things you should never have around your library books at home - things like water, candy, scissors, glue, markers, a baby (a picture of a baby, that is!) and a puppy (a stuffed animal!). We brainstorm why you'd want to protect your library books from all of these things, and the kids have a lot of fun with it! If there's time, we read one of two books:

Click the image to find this in the Stevens Memorial Library Catalog!

OR

Click the image to find this in the Stevens Memorial Library Catalog!

Older Grades (3-5)

At this point in the school year, it's important that the older grades start to get familiar with using the chromebooks in the library. They'll be using them throughout the year for research and class projects, and the 5th graders will be expected to know how to find online resources once they get to middle school, so starting them on technology early in the year is crucial.

For most classes, we've just practiced logging on using the student ID and password assigned to each student. Then, we practice going to the Elementary Libraries website and finding our Online Databases page.With the 4th and 5th graders, we've explored the Gale databases a bit, and even gotten a chance to do some practice research! 

Using the chromebooks will be something we do throughout the year, so it's important that the students remember their username and password so we can spend less time logging in and more time learning! 

After the students become familiar with using the databases and online encyclopedias for research, we'll begin our discussion about Online Safety and Digital Citizenship. 

.....

Well, that's all for now, library detectives - see you soon!

October Review!

Woah, we're flying through the school year, with October already behind us! We had a great month in the elementary libraries - we went on scavenger hunts, we read silly stories, and we firmed up what we know about the differences between Fiction and Nonfiction.

Kindergarten - Grade 2

With the youngest library detectives, we're starting the year off with practicing how to use the library and our books. In order to learn how to be responsible for our books, and take care of them properly, we first need to know the Parts of a Book.

First, we read Here Are My Hands by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault.

Click on the picture to find this title in the Stevens Memorial Library catalog!

We got a chance to move our bodies a bit while reading this book - when we heard the word "hands" we waived our hands in the air! When we heard "feet" we stomped our feet!

Afterwards, we talked about the parts of our bodies and how books have parts to them too. We talked about how the covers help protect the insides of the book just like our skin protects us. We talked about how the book's title can tell you what kind of book it's going to be (a happy book! a scary book!) just like a person's face can tell you what kind of mood their in (grumpy! excited!). We talked about how both people and books have spines, and that spines help keep us standing straight and tall. Book spines also have the secret code so it's important that when we put library books back, the spines are always facing out! 

Next, we talked about the rules for the inside of the book, where we learned that you have to read the words on the page...no matter what! That's when we read The Book With No Pictures (click on the link for a recommendation!) by B.J. Novak.

Grades 3-5

In the older grades, we've been making sure we're experts in what constitutes fiction and nonfiction before we move on to how to use both kinds of books in our daily lives. It's challenging, not only because of the language ("non-fiction" sounds a lot like it should mean "not real"), but because it seems like our older grades have trouble distinguishing historical fiction (fiction that uses real facts to tell a made-up story) from non-fiction (real facts, nothing made up).

First, we reviewed what Fiction and Non-fiction mean - what are the parts of a fiction story? What about the parts of a non-fiction book? After a review - including reinforcing what we know about the SECRET CODES - we had our first Fiction & Non-fiction Challenge!

See those piles of books on the tables at Kittredge? They're part of the challenge!

Early in the morning, I covered up the spine labels (a.k.a. the Secret Codes) of a bunch of books, and placed piles in the middle of the tables at each library. After our review, students broke into five different groups, and each group had to make a pile of the books that were fiction, and the books that were non-fiction - all without using the secret code! They had to look inside the books (because you can't judge a book by its cover, after all!) to determine what kind of book they were. It gave us an opportunity to talk about historical fiction, biographies, and a few other genres that were a bit tricky! By the end, the kids were feeling more confident than ever about knowing the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

Next up: Kindergarteners start to learn about authors, younger grades learn all about book care and the "No No Never" Box, 3rd grade starts a discussion about online safety, and the older grades discover all the amazing resources our libraries have online!

See you later, Library Detectives!