Library Bags Build Responsibility Skills

All elementary students at CAC are required to bring a back to school to transport the library books and materials they check out each week.

Please be sure that your child’s library bag:

• Is sturdy and made of cloth
• Is large enough to transport at least 2 books
• Is labeled with his/her name

We recommend that each child has his/her own bag. CAC logo bags are for sale at the Booster Club’s Spirit Store on the ground floor of the ES building. However, you can use any cloth bag you have at home, provided they follow the guidelines above.

We also recommend that when library materials are home, they stay in the library bag when you are not using them. Place the bag in the same place every night, perhaps by the door, so your child knows where it is and can pick it up on his/her day to go to the library. (This is a lesson I learned the hard way when my family lived in China. The ayee (housekeeper) would tidy up the books but, since she could not speak or read English, she'd put everything on the bookcases. The night before "library day" for my children would be a mad scramble looking for the library books on the shelves. As you can imagine, as a librarian, my house library is pretty large so it really was looking for needles in a haystack.)

We have some library bags that can be checked out, but only as a temporary measure when someone forgets their library bag and needs to carry a delicate book. We do not have enough bags to check one out to every child that forgets his or her bag.

Last but not least, please please please keep library bags away from swim bags and water bottles. We do not access late fines, but books that are water damaged will have to be paid for by the student.

Mark your Calendars for End of Year Library Dates

Here are a few dates to pay attention to as we race towards the end of the school year.

Drop Everything and Read Assembly - May 2

Image credit: CAC ES photographers, Sherifa and Ragia

Our very first date has nothing to do with the end of the school year and everything to do with having time to build our CAC reading culture. Join us on May 2, at our usual assembly time for another DEAR assembly. Students should remember to bring a book to read on their arrival at school. Teachers and the library will also have baskets of books available. Parents, you are welcome to join us in reading.

Used Book Sale - May 10 and 11

Stop by our annual used book sale and purchase lots of inexpensive titles. These titles have been weeded from the CAC libraries and classrooms. We welcome donations of books, DVDs, puzzles, magazines in good condition.

21st Century Libraries for Parents - Overdrive - May 29

The CAC Libraries have a large and varied ebook and audiobook collection on the Overdrive Media Console. Join us on May 29, 2 to 3 pm in the MHS Library, as we show you (or review with you) how to access the Overdrive collection. Please be sure to download the Overdrive app on to your mobile device before the session as downloading it on the guest wifi network will take a long time.

Also, please check to make sure that you can log in to the library catalog using your CAC single sign on as you'll need that to access the Overdrive collection.

Check out dates

Image credit: Britannica Image Quest

Last day of checkout - Monday, May 22

All materials due back - Monday, May 29

Summer check out starts - Saturday, June 3

Welcome to the 2016-2017 School Year

We are very excited to be starting school again and seeing all the smiling faces of our ES students! I hope you all had a great summer holiday and are ready for a super new year of learning and reading.

Here are some reminders for our students:

We share the library with everyone at CAC

This is our golden rule, and every behavior expectation follows from it:

• We use quiet voices in the library because other people are working, reading or playing here
• We return our library books promptly because other people want to read them too
• We walk in the library so we don't disturb other people
• We clean up after ourselves so that the library is neat and clean for others

You get the idea. We share the library with everyone, so we have to act like we would like others to act. 

Share what you read!

We hope you did a lot of reading this summer. Stop by the library and fill out a summer reading form. You'll be entered into a lucky drawing and could win a prize to reward your efforts. Of course, the best reward of reading was the enjoyment you got out of it so don't worry if you don't get a prize. 

Library bags

Remember to bring your library bag to library every week. Your library bag helps you:

• by helping you carry your books from the library and back
• by protecting your books from dust and damage
• by giving you a place to keep your books when you are not reading them at home

Library bags can be purchased from the school store. The school store bags are the perfect size for our library books. 

If a student has forgotten his/her library bag, we have a small number of bags that can be checked out. Once those run out, students without bags may only take one library book home. 

Summer checkouts

All library materials checked out for the summer need to be returned by Wednesday, August 17, or on the first day students return to CAC. Students with overdue summer checkout books will not be allowed to take books home. 

Tips for parents

Parents, visit this link for tips on how to help your students grow as super readers. 

Ways a Parent Can Help a Child with Reading

The 2 Steves at CAC

We are gearing up for our second author visit of the year, with not one but two authors coming to CAC on February 16 to 18. The 2 Steves, as British authors Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore are known together, will be presenting to the elementary and middle school. The 2 Steves write high-interest, low readability books in a choose-your-own adventure format that is very popular among our upper elementary school students. I have the good fortune to host them in China, at my previous school, and the visit was a huge success with students, teachers and parents. They are dynamic and fun, and we're in for a great time!

Want to lunch with the authors? Students, keep logging your minutes for the Million Minutes of Reading challenge because the top 12 readers in the MM will be invited to lunch with them. Log your minutes with integrity!

Visit their website, http://the2steves.net 

During the authors visit, Diwan Bookstore will be here selling copies of their books for signing, from 3:15 to 3:45 each day. These books were available at the December book fair, so if anyone already purchased a book, bring it to be autographed!

I made a mistake at the book fair and didn't purchase print copies of the books for the library. We will be getting a full set soon. Luckily, we have 28 ebook titles on Overdrive, and we have spent these last two weeks demonstrating to grade 3 to 5 students how to access them. 

Overdrive is the web service that holds our ebook collection. To access our ebooks, patrons will need their CAC single-sign-on username and password. Each patron can check out 3 books at a time, and read them (or listen to them in the case of audiobooks) on up to 3 devices. 

Here's how I've been teaching the grades 3 to 5 to access our Overdrive titles. 

1. Log in to the library catalog, http://library.cacegypt.org

2. Choose your division's library.

3. Log in to the library catalog with your CAC single-sign-on or the Quick Login. 

4. Scroll down the home page to the Overdrive icon and click. 

5. Enter your CAC single-sign-on again when prompted. 

6. Browse the collection from the main page or search for specific authors. 

To see the 2 Steves books, enter Steve Barlow or Steve Skidmore in the search field. 

Since the 2 Steves books are so popular, you may need to place a hold on the titles you are interested in. As soon as you finish a book, please return it. Overdrive will return books on the expiration date on its own, but since so many of us have holds on the books, please return them "manually." Come see us at the library if you don't know how. 

Here are instructions on using Overdrive from the Overdrive company.   Please note that because of regional restrictions, we cannot purchase books to be read on a Kindle. 

Library Bags

Every ES student at CAC is asked to bring his or her own library bag when they come to the library with their class. Cloth bags with CAC logos can be purchased at the CAC school store, but students can choose to bring a cloth bag from home. All bags should have the student's name clearly marked on the top.

Why do we insist on a library bag? Library bags can serve many purposes. They help

• to keep our books protected from damage
• to transport library items home and back
• to keep library books organized and gathered together
• to organize their materials at school and at home
• to protect DVDs in case the case opens and the disk falls out

We encourage our students to take books home in their library bags, enjoy and share the book at home, and then return the book to the library bag right away so that it is ready for re-reading or return. 

Please note that students can return and checkout books on any day of the week, not just their library day. Students are welcome to come in on their own to the library before and after school, during lunch and afternoon recess. Provided they have no overdue books and that they are within their 10 book limit, they are welcome to check out at those times. Our library is also open on most Saturdays from 10 to 2. See the CAC detailed calendar or the ES library calendar widget on the sidebar to see the Saturday dates it is open. (It's open this weekend, Aug. 29!)

If students do not bring a library bag, we limit their checkout to 1 book and no DVDs, as it is easier to keep track of just one book. 

We thank all students and parents for supporting the library collection by embracing the library bag rule.