April Is The COOLEST Month

...or so T.S. Elliot would have said if he'd been in the NAPS Elementary School libraries this month!

Even though our schedules went topsy-turvy with the start of MCAS testing, and with April vacation, we still managed to celebrate National Poetry Month in style in each of the libraries!

Each school did something a little bit unique to celebrate...check it out!

Kittredge library detectives know lots about poetry. We celebrated National Poetry Month in different ways and enjoyed listening to and writing our own poems.

The month kicked off with quatrains in grades K-2. We had fun learning about quatrains and writing one as a class before writing our own. Students listened to a variety of silly and fun poems and identified which were quatrains. One poem in particular that made us giggle and inspired many students to write their own quatrains was "If Kids Were Put in Charge of Schools" by Kalli Dakos from her book Don't Read This Book, Whatever You Do! More Poems About School:

Our town poet laureates inspired Mrs. Mullally to lead the students in a performance poetry session based on Odgen Nash's quatrain poem "The Termite."

Based on a fairy tale of their choice, grades 3-5 at Kittredge took on story recreation in poem form. We were inspired in particular by listening to the different perspectives provided within Marilyn Singer's poem about the three little pigs. This poem appears in her book Follow, Follow, a collection of reverso poems based on fairy tales.

The library was transformed into The Beatnik Cafe later in the month so that students could do a poetry book tasting and also perform their poetry in a brief poetry slam jam. We kicked off the class using the library's collection of poetry books to sample new poems and write about them in our menus. Afterwards, we worked to create and revise our existing poems. We finished it all by sharing our favorites with the class.

Sargent & Thomson also got to sample some of Marilyn Singer's reverso poetry with her first book, Mirror Mirror. We talked about how poets tell fairy tales with a slightly different perspective, and we compared and contrasted Singer's poem about Little Red Riding Hood with a traditional version by Trina Shart Hyman.

We also had a chance to listen to one of Mrs. Ahearn's favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, recite his fairy tale-inspired poem, Instructions. We discussed how knowledge of fairy tales helps inform our knowledge of other works of literature - it's like finding little clues in a forest of stories!

With the younger grades at Sargent & Thomson we talked about quatrains. A quatrain is a poem of four lines with a rhyming pattern. We read a few by famous authors (and two by Mrs. Ahearn!), and then we worked on one as a class! 

The second graders, who caught on really fast, were able to start working on their own individual quatrains - and some of the students submitted their quatrains to the Elementary Schools Poetry Contest!

Poems That Take Shape 

Students at Atkinson School had the opportunity to write their own poems during the month of April with Ms. Osborne, Atkinson Schools’ Library Media Specialist. They learned about concrete poems, also known as shape poems, through Ode to a Commode by Brian Cleary and Wet Cement: a Mix of Concrete Poems by Bob Raczka. 

After discussing the characteristics of concrete poems they then created their own poem and added art work. The younger grades used handprints as a template for their poems and were asked to write about the things they can do with their hands while the older grades were asked to come up with a shape or topic that meant something to them such as a hobby, sport or activity that they enjoy. With various poetry books available in the classroom for inspiration the children quickly came up with topics and were engaged in the activity and expressing themselves through the combination of text and artwork. 

That's it for this month, library detectives! Stay tuned for more exciting library news as we wrap up the year in May and June!

- Mrs. Ahearn, Mrs. Mullally and Ms. Osborne

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!

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!

September Review!

Hello Library Detectives! What an exciting month it's been in the NAPS libraries! We've switched some spaces around, added some fun new activities...

...oh and WE HAVE TWO BRAND-NEW LIBRARIANS!

 Here's what we've been up to in the schools:

Mrs. Ahearn has been having a blast at Sargent and Thomson and so has Mrs. Mullally at Franklin and Kittredge though we only had a chance to squeeze in a few library lessons before the month was over. In the younger grade classes, we read Red Knit Cap Girl and the Reading Tree by Naoko Stoop. It's a delightful picture book that Mrs. Ahearn first heard about through the legendary Mrs. S at the Stevens Memorial Library. In classes, we used the book to start a conversation about what we know about libraries. We talked about things that are the same between our library and Red Knit Cap Girls, and things that are different.

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

In the middle grades, we read Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I don't) by Barbara Bottner. We talked about why reading is important, and how the library is a place for kids to explore different genres to find the book that is just right for them.

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

For the older grades, we took a look at another "Miss" book - this one was a picture book biography of one of Mrs. Ahearn's personal heroes, Anne Carroll Moore. Miss Moore Thought Otherwise by Jan Pinborough is the story of the first librarian to advocate for libraries designed for children. We talked about things we take for granted when going to the library, and things we'd like to learn more about as we go through our library lessons.

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

In all of our classes, we listened to one another as we organized our ideas about what we know about libraries into a class list. Students in one third grade class at Kittredge wrote down their ideas and practiced their presentation skills with the class using our  new iPevo projector - we had lots of fun sharing things we know and building a common set of goals for this year's learning. Technology helped us organize and display our ideas at both schools.

Some of Mrs. Mullally's students talked about the amount and variety of library materials and others shared their ideas about how libraries work, how books are checked out, and how library spaces are used. Many shared information about genres and series, described fiction and non-fiction books, and what kinds of technology are found in libraries.

We are ready to move forward in our upcoming lessons during the year's quest to be amazing library detectives!