Look Whooo's reading at Midvalley!

Just in case you give a hoot!

SPRUCEWOOD ELEMENTARY MEDIA CENTER

TAKE A SPIN...

We invited our students and staff to come in and take a spin through our library to see what's new.  This bulletin board proved a great method to stir up some interest in our newly purchased books. 

Oakdale

These bookmarks are the WINNERS of a Bookmark Contest!!!

We printed enough for the entire school.

What do you think?

Alta View is Wild About Books!

We decided on a safari theme for our library this year.

 

 

Oakdale Elementary

While looking at our new order of Beehive Nominee books, we came across 'Journey' by Aaron Becker.  It is a magical book.  It is wordless and the illustrations are amazing.  After reading it, we found a video done by the author where he talks about the symbolism in the book. (The video is four and a half minutes long.)  We are excited to share this book and video with third, fourth and fifth graders next week. 

'Journey' by Aaron Becker
http://vimeo.com/74464059 is the link to the video.


Other great wordless (or almost wordless) books are:

The Lion and the Mouse, by J. Pinkney
Window by J. Baker
Zoom by I. Banyai
The Arrival by S. Tan
The Red Book by B. Lehman
Un-brella by S.E. Franson
Unspoken: a Story from the Underground Railroad by H. Cole
Flotsam by D. Wiesner


Thank you for all your great ideas!

PBIS at Sprucewood

 We are SAFE, RESPECTFUL, and RESPONSIBLE at SPRUCEWOOD ELEMENTARY! 

In an effort to reinforce our big three values, we held PBIS training with our students.  As part of our training, we demonstrated what being Safe, Respectful and Responsible looked like in our library.   It is a great benefit for student to actually see how these behaviors look in the library. We role played with our teachers and shared our new poster of "what it looks like". We now have our poster hanging in our library as a reminder of how each behavior/value should look in our library.  Our students are responding well to this added resource. 

Fun Bulletin Board Idea (Peruvian Park Elementary)

Our students (and teachers) have had a lot of fun singing this familiar song and looking at the books highlighted on our bulletin board.

The books shown on our bulletin board are becoming our most requested books in the library right now. We plan on changing the book covers periodically.

I SPY in my library (Peruvian Park Elementary)

We have a yearlong theme in our library that we will touch on throughout the year. This year our theme is I SPY in my library.

I SPY books have riddles and hidden pictures that encourage students to search for hidden objects. This year we will help our students find ‘hidden’ areas in our library, award winning books, library resources, etc.

Who Has Their Books In?

 

This year at Alta View, we decided on a book return contest for the classes.  We made a chart with butcher paper and teacher's names. By each name, we measured a large rectangle according to the number of kids in each class.  The squares were from a dye cut, and when a student returned all of their books they got a square and glued it to the poster.  This gave the kids a visual reminder of their class progress towards getting all books in and fines paid.  The first classes to have all books and fines in were given a treat.

 

The kids LOVED it, and they encouraged their classmates to get their books in.

 

Edgemont Teachers Love to Read!

I always enjoy browsing through bookstores that have "staff recommendation" tabs placed on various books.  I have a certain curiosity in knowing what others are reading and why they like particular books.  I thought that perhaps this same concept would work well in our library.  My hope was that by having "teacher recommendations", students would be more apt to check out a variety of books that they may not have tried otherwise. 

The teachers loved the idea and were eager to participate.  When the project was finally complete and in place, I was thrilled with the response from the students.  They were so excited to read the suggested books from both their current and past teachers.  The display has been in our library for a couple of months now and I still have students checking the board each week for ideas.

I couldn't fit the entire wall in a picture, but this will give you an idea of what it looks like.

 

 

I placed all of the recommended books in one area of the library so that students could easily find them.  It is difficult to keep those shelves full...so many of the books are checked out each week!

 

 

 

 

April is National Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month at Bella Vista! We celebrated by reading five different poems about dogs from different poetry books and the students voted on which ones they liked. Their favorite poem was "Mr. Beefy" from Once I ate a Pie. The second favorite poem was the book, Dogku. These poems were shared during story time to help me complete a district media module assignment. 

Before the book, Dogku was read to the students they were taught what a haiku is. They held their fingers up for the syllables in each line: 5,7,5 as the haikus from Dogku were read to them. Third through fifth grade students had the opportunity to write their own animal haikus in class and return them to the library when done. A teacher commented on this optional activity being very refreshing for the students to be creative and write and color. She said it was a nice fifteen minute break from testing. The haikus have been hanging up on the library windows through the month of April.

To see what else is going on at Bella Vista click the link to the Bella Vista Booklovers Blog! bvbooklovers.blogspot.com

Alta View Elementary Seuss Theme

We also went with a Seuss theme this year, Reading is Our Thing.

We've had fun with Dr. Seuss, and haven't even gotten sick of it yet! We have an older library, and there isn't much room for 3-D type displays, but we do have bulletin boards.  Here are our ideas:

 

 

 

This is the front of our desk, covered with butcher paper

 

 

 

 

You can't tell, but those are the different sections in the library on the signs.

 

 

 

 

Bell View Elementary

This year our theme in the Bell View library is READING IS OUR THING. We used all kinds of posters and cutouts of Dr. Seuss characters to decorate the library. We also made some fun truffula trees to display in our library. We think they look pretty cute and bright. The kids love to pet them because they are so soft.

This year we challenged the kids to read chapter books and if they finished one over 200 pages they get to write their name on a Dr. Seuss card and hang it on our bulletin board. As you can see many took the challenge and our board is filling up. At the end of the year we are giving a prize to the student that reads the most chapter books this year. The prize will be a new hard cover book and some other fun gifts.

 

 

 

 

 

If any of you would like to borrow the truffula trees to display in your library next year we would love to loan them out at the end of the year. Just give us a call at Bell View.

SPRUCEWOOD ELEMENTARY

 LEGO MANIA

Since the premier of the Lego Movie, there has been Lego Mania going on at our school.  We decided to get on-board the craze and use it to encourage our students to read and create.    We even created a few Lego characters to look like some of our favorite children’s authors. 

Mary Pope Osborne

Dr. Seuss

Brandon Mull

During the month, we spotlighted the Lego books in our library and allowed students to create book creations in our “Makerspace”.   After students had checked out their books, we allowed four students per class to use the makerspace and create something from a book they had read.   We provided a box of Legos and they did the rest.   Participants received a Lego reward for taking part in the activity.  

Michael Vey Books

Abe Lincoln at Last

Harry Potter

Star Wars

Here are some of the book creations our amazing students came up with.  We had a great time.  Even our reluctant readers, we excited about taking part in the books and the creations.   We not only had students excited about the Lego books, but also about the other books that were spotlighted in our book creations.  Students creations were spotlighted on our library bulletin board. It was such a popular activity, we have already received requests to do it again this year.