November was by far the biggest month yet for our library program here in the North Andover Public Schools! Not only did we have lots of fun in the library with our lessons, but we also had Jacqueline Woodson come to speak to the entire school district!
It was so exciting, and lots of students have been requesting books by Ms. Woodson since the visit.
November was a combination of traditional library lessons and technology lessons, which made it a very dynamic month! The first weeks of library lessons had kids participating in Scavenger Hunts - the kindergarteners went on a hunt for monkeys in the library after reading Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett, which got them familiar with all of the different sections of the library.
The first and second graders found monkeys in the library too, but they had to use clues to find specific monkeys - this scavenger hunt tested their knowledge of the sections of the library, and we found it to be trickier than we thought!
The 3-5th graders participated in a scavenger hunt that mimicked their lesson on using the catalog - we ran a keyword search in the catalog, cut out the titles, and broke up into teams to try and find as many of the titles in the library as we could! We've noticed that the older kids are much more comfortable finding books in the library on their own now, since they now fully understand the information from the catalog.
December has been all about the Hour of Code - check out our post to find out more!
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!
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 Rulefor 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!
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 ingredientsof 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.
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 Contesthappening 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!
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!
