News from the IMC

Elizabeth Ide- Last spring, we were able to acquire a number of audio books from AVID to add to our small collection. We have been experimenting with circulating these special items. It turns out that our reading specialists can make the best use of them. Therefore we transferred the collection to the reading specialists' classroom. Of course, our regular classroom teachers are still welcome to use them, as needed. It turns out to be a win-win situation.

At Prairieview, the situation with the audio books is a little different. It seems to be more advantageous to make them available for student circulation. We have a nice display rack available (a gift from AVID) and it is easy to allow the students to browse through the collection. If they remain popular, we will try to update the collection. Many of the existing audio books come on cassette tapes. As time goes by, we will add more CD's.

I.M.C. News, November, 2007

Elizabeth Ide-We are very pleased with the response to the Math-a-Thon. Many students have brought back their permission slips to participate. They have been given a workbook or a CD to use for practicing their math as well as an envelope. After finishing the problems, students should collect pledges from their sponsors in check form made out to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Please return the checks and the prize preference form in the envelope and we will forward them to the hospital. Thank you for helping your children to practice their math and supporting this worthy cause.

Prairieview- In an attempt to encourage reading and keep our students excited about books, this year we have been displaying Authors and Their Books on one of our bulletin boards. This display is updated monthly and features an author who has several books in our collection. We plan to choose highly-regarded authors, authors in the news, and old favorites who may be new to our current students. After the excitement of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the last in the Harry Potter series), our September author was J.K. Rowling. In October, we had Judy Blume and now we have Gary Paulsen, who was recently awarded the Chicago Tribune Young Adult Book Prize.