This Week in the ES Library

We will have several collaboration classes this week and our library assistants will have training from Dr. Purcell, who will be demonstrating "interactive read-alouds," a technique that is used by our ES teachers to help students deepen their understanding of texts. Here's a summary of the week by grade level.

PreK. Ms. Wafaa read Construction, by Sally Sutton, a New Zealand award winning author. Construction takes readers through the process of building a library. It features many different types of machines and lots of fun construction sounds.

Kg. Ms. Wafaa read Silly Billy, by Anthony Browne. This is the story of Billy, who always worried about lots and lots of things. He was such a worrier that he could never sleep well. One day he went to spend the night at his grandmother's house and she gave him some worry dolls to tell his worries too. He slept great that night and the next, but then he started to feel worried again. Our library lesson focused on noticing the picture clues the author illustrator gives about Billy's feelings, and empathizing with his worries. Don't be surprised if your kindergartener wants to make worry dolls this week! Here's a link to a page for making worry dolls out of pipe cleaners. 

Grade 1. Dr. Purcell will be reading Love and Roast Chicken, by Barbara Knudson. This will be a training opportunity for our library assistants, who this year are taking on the responsibility of teaching one grade level's lessons. Dr. Purcell and the assistants met last week to plan the read-aloud and she will be leading the first session with grade 1 to demonstrate for the assistants, after which Ms. Enas will be repeating with the second class of first graders. Dr. Purcell and the assistants will meet again to debrief the lesson.

Grade 2. As grade 2 is currently studying the solar system, Mrs. Fitzgerald will be reading Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars, by Douglas Florian. This is a collection of poems on celestial bodies. We will be having a poet visit CAC the first week of December, and this is a good time to hook students onto poetry. We will be having an open mic poetry reading at the parent picnic on November 11, and I'm hoping some of our second grade students will be inspired to read poems from this book then.

Grade 4. We will be reviewing the Big6 research process this week with grade 4 and creating a map that will be the base for their unit on Native Americans. (Grades 3 to 6 use the Big6 to help them go through the process of research.) As with other social studies and science units, grade 4 has a page on the Visual Tab full of links and book lists for this unit.

Grade 5. We will be having a very short tour of the library resources on poetry for grade 5's writing unit. The tour will include the resources on the Visual Tab's poetry page as well as our print collection. Grade 5 students will be helping us to select the best poetry books to keep as we prepare to weed our poetry book collection, as it is quite large but is aging. They are also invited to look at the links we have for Brod Bagert, the poet who will be visiting CAC in December, thanks to a generous grant by the PTO.

(Did you notice that we have not listed grade 3? That's because we are not currently collaborating with them for a particular project, but stay tuned, as we soon will be.)