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!

Library Fun in the Month of MAY

WOW EVERYBODY CAN YOU BELIEVE IT IS JUNE ALREADY?! This year has flown by, in a whirlwind of stories and activities, and I can't believe we only have a month left of library fun!

Much of this month was spent catching up with classes I'd not had a chance to see for the past few months, so there were lots of scavenger hunts and some fiction vs. nonfiction discussions. With the big, shiny, new changes happening*** to the library program, we'll be able to see many more classes on a more consistent basis starting in the fall.

***Our changes are that the superintendent has added 1.5 new library positions to the schools! We'll be hiring one full-time librarian, and a "shared" librarian that will work partly at the Stevens and partly in one of the schools. Hooray for more library media specialists!

Grades K-2

In many classes, we continued to talk about Fairy Tales this month, exploring both traditional, and fractured, versions of our favorites. In one second grade class, we talked about how the "original" versions of our favorites like Snow White were unexpectedly different - there's no "true love's kiss", the prince drops Snow White's coffin and the apple pops out!

Click here to check this out in the Stevens library catalog!

...the kids also really enjoyed the fact that I gave 6 of the 7 dwarfs a grizzly, Cockney accent (and the 7th a high, squeaky voice).

In some classes we also were able to talk about our favorite Fairy Tale characters along with a reading of my favorite book from my own childhood, The Jolly Postman; Or, Other People's Letters. The kids got a kick out of the fact that the letters are INSIDE the book! 

This is tough to find in libraries, since it has so many added parts that can get lost, but
a few libraries in the MVLC have it available. 

We then wrote letters to our favorite characters (the younger grades used a template), and the characters wrote back! Writing our letters gave us some good practice on what a letter looks like, what to capitalize, what words you use in a letter, etc.

We also used stories from our library to talk about the parts of a story (beginning, middle, end). We'd read a story (any story works!), and then afterwards we'd talk about the "parts" - what was the beginning? Where did the middle start? What happened at the end? Using the SmartBoards, we'd write out each of the three parts, then swirl them around and mix them up - did the story still make sense? Why or why not? 

Grades 3-5

The older grades used a bit of technology this month, either for the first time (as in the case of 3rd Grade and using Google Slides) or as a culmination of activities. 4th and 5th grade classes were introduced to Typing Club, a wonderful bit of free technology on the web that teaches proper typing methods for kids. It works wonderfully with our students's Google accounts, but you can sign in without one and still go through all the typing levels!

We also started talking about Summer Reading (more info on that next month!) and ways to find good books to read over the summer. The big takeaway for them was that the best group of people to recommend good books is their friends! 

Finally, we tasted a bit of a new genre: Short Stories! I read a few selections from Cynthia Rylant's Every Living Thing, and we talked about what you can expect when you pick up a collection of short stories - each story will have different characters, a different plot, and most of the time you can read the whole story in one sitting.

Find it in the Steven's Library's story story collection in the Children's Room!

That's it for the month of May, Library Detectives! SEE YOU IN JUNE!

March Madness!

March was another banner month for our libraries here in North Andover! I can't believe the month went by so fast! We're fast approaching our last few months of school, and we're still rolling out super fun and exciting library lessons for all grades!

Kindergarten - 1st Grade

Since many of the classes and schools have been focusing on Fairy Tales and retellings, we've continued our work with fairy tale books in the younger grades. We've focused a lot of our discussions on what the essential components or ingredients of each fairy tale are (for example, the essential components of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" are that someone sneaks into someone else's house and tries all their stuff!). Then, we've started talking about ways that some authors change some of the ingredients to make a new, fractured fairy tale! A new favorite story we've read has been The Frog Prince Continued by Jon Scieszka.

Click here to find this title in the Stevens Library collection! 

We talk about all the fairy tales that are mentioned in this book, and characters we recognize. It's been a big hit with kids and teachers!

With the 1st Graders, we've talked about those ingredients and used a graphic organizer to try and start using fairy tale ingredients to write their own fairytales - so far, it's going really well!

In some classes, we've also talked about Story Elements - what makes up the parts of a story? We read a story and map out the setting, characters, problem and solution. Understanding the components of a story is the first step towards being able to construct a new story!

2nd Grade

Our second graders have been working on finding Nonfiction Books in the Library using a fun scavenger hunt designed to help familiarize them with the information presented in our Online Catalog. Occasionally, we've been able to tie-in the books they're looking for with the subjects they're working on in class; other times, it's a general scavenger hunt for books about every second graders favorite thing: ANIMALS!

We've also begun using the chromebooks a bit more in the last half of the year with the second grade classes, with many teachers requesting either practice logging in or coding, or researching using the databases.

3rd Grade

Third graders got a taste of what April will be all about: poetry! We've been reading Hoops by Robert Burleigh, Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems by Marilyn Singer, and a few selections from the Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry. After we talk about how poetry can be about anything that makes you feel, we got a chance to write a few of my personal favorite kind of poems - HAIKU! Some of the poems have been really wonderful - and hopefully will inspire some future poets to enter into our Poetry Contest happening this April!

4th-5th Grade

Our older grades have continued to use our online resources to help discover new information to help with research projects. Many classes are working on persuasive writing, so we talked about how using Kids InfoBits and the magazine and newspaper results will help them find opinion pieces to help them persuade one way or the other about a particular topic.

We've also continued exploring our Google software programs, with many classes either creating brochures using Google Docs or creating presentations using Google Slides.

Not to get too tech-heavy, we've also tried to incorporate a few read-alouds in there, and will be focusing a lot of our work on poetry in April to tie-in to National Poetry Month.

That's all for now, Library Detectives! See you soon!