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!

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!