Winter Break

What a wonderful opportunity to do family things! Play together! Work together! Talk together! And, above all READ together.

What's up?

At Elizabeth Ide, we are reading a variety of holiday books. Christmas stories predominate, but we also touch on other holidays celebrated at this time of year such as Hanukkah. The selection for second grade this week, One Yellow Daffodil; A Hanukkah Story touches on the main character's earlier life which included losing his family in the holocaust and spending time in a concentration camp. Holocaust education is a requirement in Illinois and this book introduces a bit of the story, gently, for young children.

At Prairieview, we have been gathering information on hockey (our topic of the year after the triumph of the Blackhawks last spring) from World Book Online. Third and fourth graders will take their notes, add pictures and produce a short written document. Fifth graders are using the Inspiration program to organize their information. Hockey may or may not be important. Learning to find information and organize it is.

Math-A-Thon 2010-2011

Although this was certainly not a banner year, we had 45 students (15 at each grade level) who completed the Math-A-Thon. These students did a great job and raised well over $3,000. to help the children at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. To my knowledge, our kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade students have participated in this worthy cause for over twenty years. The staff members at the hospital have been most appreciative of our efforts and are especially thankful during this tough economic period. Many thanks to the children who practiced their math and all of their generous donars.

Picture Books?

I had the great fortune to attend a workshop this week, in which many, many new books were presented. The presenter, Dr. Peggy Sharp, talks of books published in 2010. She tells about books she likes the most and provides a long list of books she likes, organized in many different categories. She also recommends activities for quite a few books. Dr. Sharp is highly regarded and has taught grade school, been a school librarian, and a college professor.

I have attended many of these workshops through the years. They help me to keep our collections up-to-date. This time I was reminded of some things I have thought about picture books for years. When I started my job in the district, I was impressed by the picture books. They were better than they had been years before and were intended, more and more, for older children. Picture books are certainly not just for young children and early readers. It is important that today's parents and teachers realize this. Do not discourage children from reading picture books. They self-promote way too early as it is. Fortunately, in fourth or fifth grade, they tend to figure this out and discover the many wonderful picture books available to them.

A Great Resource!

The students at Prairieview will have an opportunity to use World Book Online. This site is provided by the district for all of our students. They are invited to use it at school and at home within the district. The site offers many features including four versions of the encyclopedia. These include World Book Kids, World Book Student, World Book Advanced, and Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos (for those who can read Spanish). This is an age-appropriate, reliable resource and we are glad to have it.

November Books

Our monthy book displays have changed.

At Elizabeth Ide, we are showing our Thanksgiving books. The requests have already begun, so this is a good idea. We have quite a variety.

At Prairieview, we are displaying our graphic novels. Some are reminiscent of comic books. Others display classics in a new format. And, some are new books, written with this attractive format. It is a blessing for reluctant readers.

Next week, we are launching our annual Math-A-Thon at Elizabeth Ide. This project helps our children to practice their math skills in a fun way. They recruit sponsors to support their work. Each sponsor donates money and we send all the money to St. Jude's Children Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. St. Jude is the first and only pediatric cancer center to be designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. The daily operating cost for St. Jude is nearly $1.4 million, which is primarily covered by public contributions. Every dollar we donate makes a difference. Please consider supporting your children in this endeavor.

What are we up to?

At Elizabeth Ide, we have been reading books about fall, pumpkins, and Halloween. The second graders are finishing their private lessons on the search stations this week.

Due to MAP testing in the computer lab at Prairieview, we had to interrupt our computer lessons. This week and next week, we are doing some work on dictionary skills. It is interesting to see how much trickier this is for third graders than it is for fifth graders. The fifth graders have definitely had more practice and are more developmentally able to locate words in alphabetical order.

Books on Display

Part of our mission is to teach children how to find the books they want on the shelves, where they belong. The students are taught to look up authors, subjects, or titles on the computer. They choose what they want and write down call numbers. Then they go to the shelves and find the books for themselves. That is the goal, anyway.
At the same time, we like to show off our books. So, we choose one or two subjects at a time and put the books on display. Both the children and the library staff know which books are away from home and out on display. For the last few weeks, we have been promoting books about Halloween, including such things as true books about pumpkins and books about ghosts and witches.
At Prairieview, we find that it does not cause too much confusion to segregate the nominees for the Rebecca Caudill and Bluestem awards. They are on display for the entire school year. We really want the students to participate in these programs.

Preview Books

Several times each year, I get a call from a publisher or small book supplier asking permission to send a box of preview books. Sometimes these collections are a disappointment. Many times, they are not. Small publishers often work very hard to produce high quality books. They are bound well and have appropriate reading levels with good illustrations. My assistants and I are delighted by subjects we might not have thought of. Or we are reminded of things that the students like, but our collection might be out of date. I have been cataloging a group of books we obtained from magical preview boxes.

Keyboarding

This week we are starting our keyboarding lessons at Prairieview. This is review for the fourth and fifth graders, but brand new for the third graders. It is a very valuable skill and will definitely be a part of our students' lives. We use a program called UltraKey by Bytes of Learning. It is very straightforward and has the added advantage of keeping track of each student's progress. We get the process started during I.M.C. classes and then ask the teachers to use it, as they can find time, during the rest of the school year. It can be used at any computer in the building. Students have the chance to continue right in the classroom when they have completed other work.

Searching the Catalog

For the next few weeks, I will introduce the automated catalog to the second grade classes. They are eager to learn about finding books in the library. We will begin with an overview for each whole class. This will be followed by "private lessons." Each child will have a turn to sit at the search station and look something up, under my supervision. This is using a computer for a real, grown-up task. In the past, the students have been so excited about this that they want to do a lot of searching on the computer and forget to go and get the books. Practicing this skill during second grade makes the students much better library users when they get to Prairieview.

Something important.

This week at Elizabeth Ide, we took a break between orientation and other pressing topics. We stopped to read. This is actually as important or even more important than nearly anything we can do. Reading to children stimulates their desire to read. Reading in front of them is also important. If they see that you value reading, then they begin to value it too. So, parents, read to your children, read in front of them, and, yes, listen to them read. This will certainly enrich their lives and perhaps even yours.

Illinois State Book Awards

Prairieview students are being invited to participate in Illinois Book Awards: Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award (grades 4-8) and brand new this year the Bluestem Award (grades 3-5). To be eligible to vote for the Caudills, students must have read 3 of the twenty nominees. The voting will take place in February. To be eligible to vote of the Bluestems, students must have read 4 of the twenty nominees. The voting will take place in March. Both of these programs give students great power. The nominees are bought by most libraries throughout the state and the winning authors will sell many, many copies of their books in Illinois and, well, around the world. We ask that students who are fortunate enough to have public library cards borrow these books at the public libraries. This will leave the copies in the school library availble for students who do not have public library cards.

I.M.C. Orientation

At the beginning of each year, we remind the students about staying safe in the I.M.C., taking good care of the materials, and circulation conventions. Please help us and your students by taking good care of our materials. They need to be returned as soon as you have finished reading them. If they get lost or are damaged too much to use, you will have to pay for them.

Thank you for your consideration.

New This Year!

There are always new things for new school years and this year is no exception. I started my week at Prairieview. We had a very different first day this year. All of the students and their homeroom teachers spent the morning of the first day moving through nine stations. One of the stations was the I.M.C. With PBIS as our structure, we introduced a few basic behavior objectives for the I.M.C. and the computer lab. We will try to be respectful, responsible, and safe.



At Elizabeth Ide, we are blessed with all new flooring and lots of new paint, as well as a lot of updated equipment, especially in the washrooms. It is certainly nice to have brand new carpeting in the I.M.C. and the surrounding hallways. It is fresh and clean. We started our orientation lessons with the students sitting on the floor. Even the pattern of the carpet helps. I was able to ask the children to sit outside the red area which enabled me to use the computer for my presentation without worrying about bumping into knees or toes.

Author Visit

As we count down the last days of school at Ide, each day is represented by a letter of the alphabet. Today is I Love to Read Day. The students will be enjoying a visit with author, Craig Pierce.

Thanks to the P.T.O., we have been able to add a few of his books to our collection.

When Mr. Pierce arrived this morning, he brought his pet greyhound with him. I just got to meet both of them and I am pretty sure his visit will encourage our students to read. (Always a good idea!)

Graphic Novels

In one sense, this is a new name for comic books. You may be a skeptical about them. However, the publishers now use this technique for all kinds of books and they address a wide scope of interest and reading levels. It was pointed out at the Anderson's Book Store workshop that the pictures in graphic novels go way beyond those in picture books in telling the story. The bottom line is we want the children to read and, for some, graphic novels are very appealing.

We recently acquired a series at Elizabeth Ide called Leave it to Pet. They are intended for young children and the underlying theme is recycling. Having been created by a Japanese gentleman named Kenji Sonishi, they have one other feature that should prove very interesting to our students. They read from right to left and from what we would consider back to front. It is likely that for decades Japanese children have considered translations of Western books to be backwards.

What's going on?

The first few weeks after spring break at Elizabeth Ide will be spent learning about internet safety. We talk about the cyberspace community. There are some things that are just fine for children to do, some that require adult help and supervision, and some that are inappropriate at any time. Another topic is keeping personal information to ourselves. Anything put on the internet will be there forever. We discuss communication with strangers. We need to be very careful about people we do not know in real life. People on the internet may not be who they say they are. We also need to protect our computers from viruses. Children should not go to any program, site, or open any attachment without adult approval. Many of our students tell about viruses on their home computers.

At Prairieview, we are working on some research skills. Third graders have been learning to use guide words. We play a few games which incorporate this skill. Fourth graders are taking a look at the work of great American hero Melvil Dewey. His system has enabled patrons to find materials in most libraries in the United States. Once the students get good at using the Dewey Decimal System, they should have little difficulty adjusting to systems such as the Library of Congress System. Our fifth graders have been exposed to different types of catalogs. Ours if quite easy to use, but they may encounter some that are not and I want them to be confident enough to locate the information they are looking for.

State Winners

The Illinois award winners have been announced. The students, at Prairieview in particular, are quite interested in the results as compared to the results in our schools. I wrote about the local winners a few weeks ago. The state winners are as follows:
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award
1st place: All the Lovely Bad Ones
2nd place: Someone Named Eva
3rd place: Elephant Run

Monarch Award
1st place: Scaredy Squirrel
2nd place: Once I Ate a Pie
3rd place: Gingerbread Girl

If you are at all concerned about the huge increase in childhood obesity, how about asking the Easter Bunny for a book and a little less candy?

Spring is here! (We hope.)

The Elizabeth Ide I.M.C. has been redecorated for spring. The topic is baseball. We said goodbye to all our Australia decorations and hung lots of new baseball pictures from the ceiling.

The pictures of books about Australia have been replaced with books about baseball. We have close to a HUNDRED books on the subject, so we can't show them all. Second graders know how to look for them in our catalog. After spring break, we will display baseball books so everyone can easily find them. For now, here is a sample.

A New Award

The prairie grass in Illinois is called Bluestem. And now, so is our new readers' award. Illinois librarians decided to add an award for students in grades three through five. The first time this award will be made is in February of 2011. Prairieview School students will participate. Perhaps we can plant some Bluestem grass to be viewed from the school.We will continue to participate in choosing the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award. It is intended for 4th through 8th graders. Sometimes the selections are a little sophisticated for the younger students in this group. However, we don't want to discourage our more advanced readers.

At Elizabeth Ide, we will continue to participate in the Monarch Award. Intended for kindergarten through 3rd grade students, it has been very popular.

Award Results at Elizabeth Ide and Prairieview

We have completed, tallied, and submitted the results of our voting for the Illinois state awards at both Elizabeth Ide and Prairieview.

The students at Elizabeth Ide participated in the Monarch Award with

1st place 2nd place

tied for 3rd place

The third graders at Prairieview selected the following for the Monarch Award.

1st place 2nd place 3rd place

The fourth and fifth graders at Prairieview participated in the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award and selected the following.

1st place 2nd place 3rd place

When the results for the state of Illinois have been published, I will report them.