Welcome back to school! We hope you had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday, and that you read heaps and heaps of great books. Remember to log your minutes of holiday reading, if you haven't already. The link to the Million Minutes of Reading Form is on the menu of this blog. You will need to log in with your CAC username and password.
The monthly CAC Core Value focus for January is on integrity, and logging your reading minutes is an opportunity to exercise your integrity by entering accurate amounts. While it's okay to round up numbers to the nearest 10 or 100, please make sure to not inflate your reported minutes. We'll get there together and with integrity, or else the journey is not worth it.
Our preK teacher told me this morning that one of her preK students told her he wanted to "see Mr. Bagert again." That's probably true of all the CAC students who saw Mr. Bagert in action.
We had three dynamic days of presentations by Brod Bagert, during which he met with all the ES grade levels and 6th and 7th grade. He is an energetic performer and he kept us all wildly entertained during each of his assemblies.
As a teacher-librarian, I appreciated the humor in his presentations, his focus on writing from a child's perspective, and especially his tips on adding expression to your voice when performing: first make your face reflect the emotion you want to express, move your body to reflect that emotion, and then speak. When you do, your voice will express the feelings you want, without you having to think about how to do it. Your face does it for you!
But of all his advice, the best was certainly to "first, do your worst!" When sitting down to write, one should try to write as badly as possible. This means not paying attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation at first. Rewriting is very important because it is in rewriting again and again that we can make a piece better. He told us that he might rewrite a poem 50 times, each time looking for ways to make it a better poem. One of the fourth graders sitting near me, nodded his head, saying, "That makes sense." It makes great sense to me too, and I know we teachers will be reminding students of this important message for the rest of the year.
Here are some pictures from the presentations. They are taken from my very old phone, so they might not be very good photos, but they capture moments that were precious and filled with fun.
We have a table display full of books on compassion this month to go with our ES school wide core value focus. Well, I should say now half-full because the titles have been in great demand and many are checked out at every check out session.
How do we show compassion in the library?
We take good care of our books
We recommend our favorite books to our friends, so they too, can enjoy them
We respect the book choices of others
When we read fiction, we try to understand how characters feel
We make connections between text and our world, other books and ourselves
To see a full list of titles on compassion on our library catalog, you can visit the Visual Tab.
We all know the story of the lovable elephant who stands up for invisible people on a speck of dust. Horton shows compassion and integrity in protecting all of the little Whos even though he cannot see them and can barely hear them. All he knows is that they're people and therefore worthy of respect.
With The Seussical musical on this year, it's a great time to reconnect with Dr. Seuss.
Winner of the Caldecott Medal in 2011, this is the sweet story of Amos McGee, a patient and loving zookeeper. When he stays home sick with a cold, his animal charges come to take care of him in return. Compassion all around goes around.
One of my favorite books, Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen, is super fun to read aloud because of the different voices and because of the lovable lion. In this story, librarian Mr. McGee forgets the importance of compassion for all library patrons, and the rule-abiding lion gently reminds him by example.
Another favorite. In this story, little Tomie teaches his grandfather to walk again after his stroke, just like his grandfather taught him to walk as a baby. This is a beautiful story of love and compassion between generations.
Patricia Polacco draws on a family story in the book about a Jewish family who helps their Christian neighbors one year when Christmas was in danger of not coming to town because of a bad scarlet fever epidemic.
There are three books by Patricia Polacco on this list and I bet I could find several more to fit. All of her books are gorgeously illustrated and heart-felt.
Since December is a short month, we will continue to focus on compassion until the break. That's fitting because the world needs a lot of compassion right now.
We had a such a great morning today for our Character Dress Up Day! Thanks to all!
First we had a read aloud by Sarah Gauch, who shared a few pages of her new book, The Tomb Robber and King Tut. Ms. Gauch visited the grade 3 Egypt Culture classes today, as they devote a unit to the study of Tutankhamen and his fabulous treasure trove. The ES library has two copies of the new book, as well as 3 copies of her previous book, Voyage to the Pharos.
After Ms. Gauch's short presentation, we had our character parade and oh, so many wonderful costumes of classic literature characters. I hope students had as much fun coming up with their costumes as we had seeing how clever they were.
My favorite costumes were the simplest: (although the amazing Rapunzel in the tower costume was amazing precisely because it was not simple! Sadly, I don't have a photo of it. If you do, please email me!!) Here are only a few of the many, many great costumes that we saw today.
The rabbit from Alice in Wonderland
Judy Moody from Judy Moody Saves the World
The Old Man and the C -- ha ha!
The Lorax
Splat the Cat
The Man in the Yellow Hat
Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket
The Phantom Tollbooth
Treasure Island - not a character, the whole book!
Judy Moody
Amber Brown
I was so busy with the assembly, I didn't have a chance to take more photos myself. I am looking forward to seeing the undoubtedly wonderful photos our school photographers will take for the yearbook!
The audience behavior of our elementary students today was exemplary. Well done, ES! Even though we were so excited with the parade and the author and the bookmark competition announcements, all the elementary students were attentive and respectful when it was time to listen. We're very proud and we hope this is a trend that will continue to improve.
Here is a short movie by our tech integrators from the parade. Thanks, Ms. Hebba and Ms. Ingy!
Congratulations and thanks to the 31 students who signed up to read their poems at the first ever Poetry Open Mic at today's family picnic. These 31 students showed courage and responsibility in selecting a poem - or writing one - and practicing the delivery on their own to perform today.
The parent picnic is a great CAC tradition and it is always wonderful to see families coming together on our ES lawn. Today's picnic had an even better attendance than ever. Thanks for coming, parents!
Here are some photos of our poetry performers. Please let us know if you have comments or suggestions. I hope there will be a next time and we want to make it an even better event.
Librarians and teachers: This was very easy to set up. I opened up a sign up sheet a week in advance and students had to read their poem to me first. This was to make sure that the poem was appropriate and to give each child a little coaching. I had poetry books available and I made copies of each poem, although every student was told that he/she was responsible over his/her poem. Most did come with their poems, but having the flat copies on a music stand made it easier for students to read while holding a microphone. Each student had to say his/her name, the title of the poem and the author.
November is turning out to be pretty busy in the library. Not only are we reading for the Million Minutes Challenge and researching for non-fiction and social studies units in almost all of the grade levels, but we also have several big dates coming up.
November 11 - Poetry Open Mic at the Parent Picnic
Students in grades 2 to 5 are invited to sign up to read a poem aloud at the Parent Picnic this week. There is a sign up sheet in the library and I'm asking all students to show me the poem they're going to read and read it to me. This is to give them a little rehearsal before they "go on stage." On the Parent Picnic, we will have a microphone set up and students who have signed up can come up to perform their poems. Poems can be chosen out of our many poetry books or be self-written.
November 17 - Character Dress Up Day & Library Assembly
All students, teachers and parents are invited to dress up as a favorite character from the classics, to celebrate reading and CAC's 70th anniversary. Click here to visit my Character Dress Up Pinterest board. Store bought costumes are okay, but it really is more fun to create your own.
We will be parading at the library assembly on November 17, but please be reminded that the focus of the assembly is not the character costumes. Rather, it is a celebration of literacy at our school and therefore we have other items to perform in addition to a short parade. Ms. Sarah Gauch, author of Voyage to the Pharos, will perform a few pages of her new book, The Tomb Robber and King Tut. Ms. Gauch visited CAC two years ago when her first children's book came out and we are delighted to have her join us again. In addition to read aloud at the assembly, she will be working with the grade 3 Egypt Culture classes that day.
November 29 to December 3 - PTO Annual Book Fair
Although not strictly a library event, we are happy to support the PTO Annual Book Fair. This year, the PTO have invited four different vendors, so we are sure to have a good variety of books. Please consider volunteering with the PTO to help students navigate the vendors. We will not have a schedule of class visits for another week or so, so do sign up to come help any student and then come with your own children at a separate time.
December 1 to 3 - Author Visit by poet Brod Bagert
Poet Brod Bagert will visit CAC the first week of December. He will be working with ES and MS students, and will be autographing copies of his books which will be on sale at the book fair. Visit Mr. Bagert's website here: www.brodbagert.com.
Grade 2 is currently studying the solar system. Their essential questions for the unit are:
How do we know about our place in space?
What is our solar system and where do we fit in it?
The library has lots of resources, both print and digital, to help answer these questions. They are, as usual, gathered together on the library catalog's Visual Tab.
Print - We refreshed our astronomy print collection last year. The average year of publication for that particular section of the library was 1994. By weeding books that were older than 10 years, and purchasing lots of recent publications, we brought up that average to 2007.
Grade 2 students learned how to browse the shelves, using the information on book spines to locate titles of interest. They also reviewed how to use the shelf markers to return books to the correct place.
Digital - We have many digital resources for grade 2, all accessible from the library catalog.
Visit the Visual Tab to see the collection of resources.
To get to the Visual Tab, visit the library catalog, http://library.cacegypt.org. Choose the elementary school library link, and click on the tab marked Visual above the main search field.
PebbleGo is a particularly good resource. The content has been developed specifically for young researchers, and includes topics in science and social studies, including the solar system. The link from the Visual Tab takes you directly to the solar system section, but you'll have to first log in. Grade 2 students can refer to their catalog login credential cards in their take home folders. All other CAC patrons can log in to the library catalog using the Quick Login to see the full list of databases we subscribe to, as well as the usernames and passwords for each.
Another excellent resource is BrainPop and BrainPop Jr. BrainPop has engaging animated video clips featuring a robot called Toby. In BP Jr., a little girl called Annie accompanies him. One of the buttons on the Visual Tab, called "Space", is a shortcut to various movies about bodies of the solar system. The other button is a movie on gravity. Interested, and advanced students, could also go to BrainPop, the older version and do a search for solar system. Both BrainPop and BrainPop Jr. will require username and password. As above, refer to the login credential card or log in to the library catalog using the Quick Login.
