Children's Book Week

We celebrate Children's Book Week every week in the Jeffers Pond Media Center. This week is no different. However, we are doing a few extra activities to keep us excited about books over the summer. For example, we are exploring over 500 new e-books available through Mackin Via. Students are super excited about the new selections. 5th graders are sharing Movie Maker book trailers they created with their friends.  3rd Graders are wrapping up reading about Clementine and her adventures. (So far each class has given Clementine a round of applause at the conclusion of Sara Pennypacker's great read aloud.)  All students have been researching and reading about butterfly gardens. We can't wait to watch our butterfly garden bloom into action.  Finally, I am encouraging every student to create a Biblionasium account to help keep them motivated about reading during the summer.

I hope the students will take advantage of these great books and resources. I created a PowToon PSA (in Google Apps) to get them excited.  I love PowToons and hope to get students creating their own PowToons next year. I attended a Google Summit over the weekend and I am pumped up about the possibilities!

Skype, JP News & a Virtual Field Trip

Our 1st Mystery State skype with fourth graders kept our media center rocking and rolling this morning. The experience was a huge success. So was a multi grade level taping of JP News and a "Books and Breakfast" celebration in honor of our Read A Thon.

Skype Time!

Fourth and fifth grade students traveled to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History last week. It was a fun virtual field trip and behind the scenes tour of the museum courtesy of Scholastic. The trip fit in with our information literacy discoveries of primary and secondary sources too!

Third graders were introduced to Sara Pennypacker's Clementine which is one of my all time favorite reads for this age level. I love Clementine's voice. Students used MackinVia for the first time in class and continued to explore the card catalog in more detail.

The card catalog was fun to explore with the second graders as well. Looking up resources on the computer is always exciting. But can the students then find that information on the shelves in the library?  The skill of searching for information is one they will continue to practice in years to come. The students did a great job of helping one another.



"Books & Breakfast"



Thank you to author Peter H. Reynolds for his electronic version of The Dot. Kindergarten and first grade students enjoyed listening to him read. We also used the activities at the conclusion of the book and practiced putting the illustrations in story order on the Smartboard.

Two of my favorite new book finds this week were: Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon and Back to Front and Upside Down by Claire Alexander. My Kindergartner at home loved them too!

We hope you have had a chance to explore MackinVia at home. Check it out over Spring Break if you have not already done so with your child. Directions on how to create a backpack may be found in the Jeffers Pond Journal. Here is an easy suggestion for creating a backpack. Once you have logged on as a Jeffers Pond student, create the user name with your child's  1st initial+last name. The password could be just your child's last name. You will be asked for your email address when setting up the backpack.  Backpacks are fun to use with mobile devices. Just get the MackinVia app in the app store (ios) or play store (android).  Happy reading and enjoy your spring break!



JP News



Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

 

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  ― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You 

How appropriate is it that my youngest shares a birthday with a one of a kind author?  We will celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday at home and at school next week.

For those Justin Bieber fans some younger classes will be listening to his rendition of The Cat in the Hat.

3rd - 5th graders will use Excel to decode Dr. Seuss titles. 4th and 5th graders will wrap up their movie maker book trailers (perhaps titles include some Dr. Seuss favorites?) Finally, throughout the course of the month all students will be introduced to Mackin Via's e book collection!

We are also dabbling in OverDrive's School 30 day free trial. We are excited to offer the teachers another way to access e- books. Whether or not we continue after the trial will be dependent on cost, flexibility, and user friendliness.

Our Read A Thon last month was a success. The PTC is using the funds raised to break out new iPads! It will be exciting to use this technology with our students. Speaking of technology, I have still  not given up hope of getting ipod touches in the library. I submitted the grant to our principal today, will pass it on to the Laker Education Foundation next week and hope for the best.

Enjoy your weekend and remember “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” ― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Random Acts of Kindness

Happy Valentine's Day from the JP Media Center.  I Love to Read activities have been front and center in the library this month. Random Acts of Kindness, Jump Rope for Heart, and the Jeffers Pond Read a Thon have been keeping the kids excited about giving this month too.

The classes this week watched a segment of the Kindness School video from Puget Sound Community School giving "Kind Thought Notes" to others in the community. We decided to do something similar in our own library. The students were  excited to create kind notes for others and equally excited to find them waiting for them around the media center.


 Kindergarten students reading "kind thought notes" at their computer spots.

Students have also been studying how to convert PowerPoint slides to JPEGs to use in Movie Maker book trailers they are creating, research topics using reliable online sources, create impressive power point presentations, appreciate the works of Mercer Mayer, Arnold Lobel, Maurice Sendak and Katherine Applegate, and successfully use ABCMouse and Teach My Monster to Read websites. Of course the students did an outstanding job of producing the February edition of JP News once again!

Vintagio App, Guest Reader, and Nooks

Vintagio App

One my my latest finds is the Vintagio app for the iPad. We used it with my 5th grade class to create a few how to videos for the kindergartners in the library. We had a great time and it did not take long to get the ideas rolling.

How to drop off books in the book drop...

Story Corner Seats...


Computer Use...

Guest Reader

Take a look at the reading of Snowmen at Night by our own special guest reader, Dr. Warner, our principal. It was a lot of fun producing the video. We hope you enjoy it!

Nooks

We are circulating Nooks in the library among the teachers. We are going to learn as we go.   I set up a Google Doc to help keep track of what the teachers want loaded on each device. Today I will submit my first order. Wish me luck!

The students have also been using PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word during Media Classes. We have been busy in the JP Media Center creating, publishing, and promoting (favorite books of course)!

Enjoy your winter break!

Nooks on the Horizon

We have had a busy month in the Jeffers Pond Media Center.  Third - Fifth graders have been working on the SOS Internet Safety Scavenger Hunt. Fourth and Fifth graders are in the process of creating digital stories using Movie Maker. Kindergarten and First Grade Students are becoming more proficient in using the computer lab blog. Second grade students have been learning about different genres and having fun with Google Lit Trips to Australia and the ocean.  Students have also been enjoying books by David Wiesner, Carole Marsh, Jonathon Rand, Mem Fox, and Gertrude Chandler Warner.  AND,  I have been getting ready for an eReader roll out in the library!

I am so excited to be able to offer eReaders to classroom teachers for check out.  Starting with teacher check out is the first phase of the plan. Once we get the teachers checking the eReaders out for student use, then we will hopefully be able to purchase more and check them out to students.

I decided to go with the Barnes and Noble Nook. Thanks to Buffy Hamilton's blog and many other specialists posting their experiences, I feel this is the best route for now. We will have 10 (certified pre owned) Nook Colors, 10 industrial cases, and 10 protection plans coming our way the first week of December. I love the fact that Barnes and Noble offers support and training for the teachers at no additional cost. The teachers that attend the training will have first dibs on the devices.  The training is on Dec. 7 beginning at 8:15 am.

Another program I am excited to venture into is Mackin's Via.  Mackin hosted a wonderful informational dinner last week. There I learned how easy it is to incorporate ebooks from one of my favorite resources.  Students will have access to these eBooks soon. How they will work with the Nooks, I am not sure at this point. But the books will be available on the computer and iPads.

Ipads? I am crossing my fingers that my foundation grant came through and that we will hopefully be rolling out a few iPads in our library as well. Stay tuned.

Enjoy the rest of the week and Happy Thanksgiving!

Mystery Book Week!

I love this time of year with the falling leaves, cooler weather, and talk of scary stories! A recent find of mine (at the Mackin Warehouse book sale) was Carl Reiner's Tell Me a Scary Story.... But Not TOO Scary! The sound effects on the cd make the story come alive for the 2nd and 3rd graders.  In class we talk about how the background music, voices, pictures and text all combine to make the story scary. We felt a little relieved at the end to find out that our imaginations got the better of us, just like the main character.

Of course the American Chillers series by Johnathan Rand is a hit with the 5th graders. It is amazing how once I showcase this series, they are always checked out. It looked like a feeding frenzy over at the FIC RAN section of the library today.

Another author that capitalizes on tying in state information in a book series is Carole Marsh.  Her books use real kids and real places in the  mysteries. I introduced fourth graders to these books and I am interested to see how well they like them. They are a great tie in to their state studies in Social Studies. Naturally, the book I happen to share with them in class was The Mystery in the Twin Cities.