BookPALS Group Read!

Last week, we inaugurated a visiting readers program in collaboration with BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools).  Professional performers volunteer as readers in elementary school classrooms. BookPALS is a national program administered by the Screen Actors Guild  (SAG) Foundation.  To learn more, go to their website.  

Another literacy program offered by the SAG Foundation is the website StoryLine OnLine. There you can hear (and watch) great picture books, including Betty White reading the classic picture book Harry the Dirty Dog and Satoshi Kitamura's Me and My Cat? read by Elijah Wood.  

Reading Interest Surveys

I like to begin the school year by asking students what they like to read.   In the lower grades, students draw a picture of what kinds of books they like.  This week, to launch our year of Library with third graders, I am reading Wild About Books, a tribute to Dr. Seuss by Judy Sierra. After reading this entertaining, rhyming narrative in which all the zoo animals go crazy for reading (and writing), students completed a survey (below) that will help me get to know their preferences as readers.

Click HERE to listen to Judy Sierra reading Wild About Books

Summer Reading!

We have been distributing NEW New York Public Library library cards these last weeks.  If you have not filled out an application for your child, please see Cheryl in the library or Fidelina in the lobby.  She is there each morning with a stack of personalized cards for each child.  The major advantage of this card is that the library will forgive prior fines and no longer charge any late fees. This is major!  

"Miss Thea," librarian from the NYPL's Ottendorfer Branch, visits
classrooms to get kids excited about the summer reading program.

Library Celebrates Earth Day

Recycling notes

The library continues to offer learning experiences that connect children to the community outside of our school through human resources.  Thanks to a library visit from Julia Goldstein from the agency GrowNYC, we learned how we can become good citizens by recycling at school and at home.  Ms. Goldstein is partnering with teachers Mrs. Heather Madigan (STAR)  and Danette Lebron (TNS).   Julia played a trash sorting game with grades 1/2, in preparation for which we learned about recycling categories.  Did you know that only if plastic has a neck that is smaller than its body it is recyclable? That means those plastic berry containers go in the trash.  Don't be surprised if your child has more recycling facts to share with you!                      

Creative Lettering

For All School Work Time this month, I offered the activity of Bubble Lettering, inspired by The Kids' Book of Creative Lettering, which had been sitting on my "personal" shelf in the library for awhile, waiting for the right opportunity to use it.  Surprising, the attendees were all PreK and K's (not the "tween" group I would have imagined would have been drawn to the activity).  With a They Might Be Giants "ABC" album soundtrack, we sat down and embellished our names for 45 straight minutes.  Some of the results:

Author Visit: Laura Pedersen

Laura Pedersen, Unplugged,
Tilbury House, 2012

On April 5th, just in time for Screen-Free Week (formerly known as "Turn off Your TV Week") Author Laura Pedersen discussed her book Unplugged with S.T.A.R. third graders in our library.  In this realistic fiction picture book, Ella is frustrated by her family's being constantly "plugged in" to their electronic devices, and decides to unplug them: her brother from his videogames, her dad from his computer, and her mom from her cell phone, in order to reconnect as a family. Ms. Pedersen asked kids what they would do without a screen, and there was no shortage of answers. 

April is School Library Month

Students from grades 2+ are invited to participate in the School Library Challenge.  Forms are available in the library. The deadline is April 30th.