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!

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!

Scavenger Hunts; or, Navigating Our Library Space

The first few visits to the school library can be a little confusing, especially for little ones who may never have visited a library before. North Andover is lucky to have a wonderful library, the Stevens Memorial Library, that I'm sure many families have visited - but not every family. Therefore, the first time our students visit their school library, they might be feeling a lot of things:

• Anxious ("Will I make a mistake?" "This doesn't look like my classroom.")
• Overwhelmed ("Do I have to read all these books?!")
• Stubborn ("I don't like reading, and I won't like the library.")
• Excited ("We're out of class, this is just like recess!")

It's really important that we go over all the rules of using the school library at the start of the school year, just so every child is on the same page with regard to expectations. Once those rules are gone over (Lesson 1), we can move on to Lesson 2: Navigating Our Library Space.

Kindergarten - Grade 2

For the younger set, we have been reading "Alphabet Mystery" by Audrey Wood:

Click on the picture to see this title in the MVLC catalog!

We talk about what happens when the letters get jumbled up and out of order - it's no fun! 

Afterwards, we talk about how numbers are also in a special order, and to illustrate that, we sing Five Little Monkeys. 

BUT WAIT! It turns out that those little monkeys have scattered all over the library, and are hiding in the different sections! As a group, we quietly (so as not to startle the monkeys!) line up and march through the library space, pointing out the monkeys and the sections they're in. While most kindergarten/first grade teachers have expressed an interest in having students only check out picture books for the first few weeks, this exercise introduces the students to all the important places within the library. 

Grades 3-5

The older grades are (by and large) already familiar with the library space. However, what I've been noticing is that the older students know where the books are - "Diary of a Wimpy Kid is on this shelf!" - but not why the books are where they are. 

During our lesson, we go over the three basic call number labels, or "Secret Codes", for the books in the library:

E = "Everybody" or "Early Reader" - picture books & early readers

F/FIC = "Fiction" - chapter books

Numbers = Nonfiction 

I pose a challenge to the older grades to use what we've talked about, and what they already know about the books they're looking for, to find their books at check-out instead of using the catalog computers. This way, they can learn to recognize the important call number information so that when they do use the catalog, they know what all the call numbers mean and where they are.

Lastly, we break up into teams of two and do a quick Scavenger Hunt. The teams have to find a book representative of all the different sections in the library. One tricky one that's come up at the schools is Reference Books (i.e. books to "refer" to for a quick question, like a thesaurus, dictionary, or encyclopedia). We'll be getting better acquainted with these books as the year goes on, especially since in middle- and high-school students are expected to use reference books as research tools. 

That's all for now - stay tuned for more, Library Detectives!