Successful Spring Book Fair!!

A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Stinger and the Harrison PTO for organizing another successful book fair!!! Our students always look forward to the book fair because I'm often asked "Mrs. Anderson, when is the next book fair?"  The book fair helps to supplement our library budget.  With the book fair funds, I am able to purchase more high interest books that our students always love!  This year, because of the money spent at the book fair, I was able to purchase 54 new books for our library and book clubs at the close of the fair.  In addition, I will be able to spend an additional $1700 when the new Scholastic catalog comes out this summer.  WOW!  Also, our students benefit from being able to buy new books at a reasonable price to read over the summer.  Thank you, again, to Mrs. Stinger and all of the moms who volunteered their time to set up, run the cash register, clean up, and promote the event!!  Happy reading to all!

McHenry Public Library Visit

Today we had a wonderful visit from the Miss Caitlin and Super Hero "Super Reader" (who looks surprisingly like Miss Mariann...).  

These two funny ladies explained the McHenry Public Library Summer Reading Program to our students.  The program kicks off on Saturday, June 6th.  The theme this year is "Every Hero Has a Story" for grades PK-5 and "Unmask" for grades 6-12 (use the grade the student will be going into this fall).  Once students sign up, they will receive a game board with different activities to complete.  There are three different prize levels and the prizes depend on the age of the student.  The program is FREE and open to anyone with a McHenry Public Library card.  Don't have a card?  Signing up is easy at the library!  For more information, visit the McHenry Public Library website:  http://www.mchenrylibrary.org/index.php/library-news#summerreading

Help Super Reader keep her powers this summer...READ!!!

Children's Book Week

Last week, May 4-10th, was Children's Book Week and like past years, Harrison School celebrated in many ways!  First, we had our annual bookmark decorating contest.  Students were encourage to decorate a bookmark with the theme "Power Up and Read" (which is also the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge Theme this year).  As usual, our students were very creative and they came up with some awesome ideas!  It was hard, but we chose several winners from each grade level to copy and put out for other students to use as bookmarks.  Here are some of the winners:

Next, students were encouraged to write the title of one of their favorite books on a piece of paper to put up in the library for all to see.  It's so nice having these on display for students to look at and get ideas for what to read next!

On Tuesday, students brought in a favorite book for DEAR time (Drop Everything and Read).

 

Finally, last week most of our students logged in to the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge website and started logging their reading minutes.  

It's always fun to celebrate books!!

Battle of the Books!

Every year, one of the biggest highlights of our library program is our Battle of the Books tournaments!  We just completed our SIXTH year and our program has grown so much since when we first started.  We began with just two grade levels, 3rd and 4th, and one tournament.  This year, we had a third grade tournament, a 4/5th grade tournament, and a 6-8th grade tournament.  We also had two staff teams and the winner of those two teams battled the winner of the 6-8th grade tournament.  A total of 60 students, 10 staff team members, and 11 staff coaches participated this year!

How does it work?  Students form teams of 4-6 members.  There are 10 book titles for each level of battle.  The students work together to try to get each of the books read by at least two team members.  The teams also each have one coach to help keep them on track.  This year, our teams were formed, and the students began reading the books in December.  

During the battles, the teams take turns answering questions about the books.  The questions are always in the form of "In which book..." and the answer is always the title and author of one of the books.  It sounds easy, but it's not!!  Many of the questions focus on small details in each of the books.

Here were some of the highlights from this year's battles:

This was the first year we separated 3rd grade and had them do their own battle and it worked out beautifully!  The students were able to read books that were a little more manageable and ease into the experience.  We had four teams.  The two winners from Monday's preliminary rounds were Team Girl Power and Fiction Addiction.  Team Girl Power won the final, but not by very much!

At the 4/5th grade level, we had three 4th grade teams and two fifth grade teams.  The Rocking Bookworms 4th grade team beat the Flying Battle Books by just two points to make it into the final round!  The 5th grade team CBLC Bridge to BOB beat the Japanese Dwarfs to advance to the finals.  In the final round, it was tied for a while but The Rocking Bookworms pulled ahead for the victory!

We had three teams in the 6-8th grade battle.  During the preliminary rounds, the 6th grade team, Fantastic Five, beat both the 7th grade team (Jose Upton Liked Unicorns Too Much) and the 8th grade team (Word Nerds).  The final battle ended up being between the Fantastic Five and the Word Nerds with the Word Nerds pulling out a victory!

It was fun to watch our two staff teams compete against each other!  I'm sure it's not easy to compete against your peers with other peers watching (Hmm, must be what it feels like among our student teams!!).  Team "No Comparison to This Staff of Harrison" fought hard, but our junior high staff team won for the second year in a row!  They then went on to beat the 8th grade winning team.  Congratulations to ALL who participated in any way!  

A HUGE thank you to all of the staff members who helped helped out as coaches!  We couldn't do this without them!  Also, thank you to my co-director Mrs. Lachel and our principal, Mrs. Huff for all of their help!  Thanks to Caitlin Bergan from the McHenry Public Library for help with writing questions and during some of the preliminary rounds! Thanks to Dale for help setting up and cleaning up!  Finally, thanks to ALL of the Harrison staff for being flexible during these last few days!  You are all AWESOME!

Book Trailers

Our fifth grade students recently finished creating their book trailers and they turned out great!  A book trailer is an advertisement for a book...like a movie trailer.  For this project, students worked alone or in pairs.  After selecting a recently read book that they wanted to promote, the students then created a storyboard to organize their thoughts.  

Once the storyboard was created, the students then used the iPads to select several pictures from the Internet to go with their stories.  They learned how to use Google search tools to modify their search results to include only pictures that are labeled for noncommercial reuse.

After selecting pictures to use, some of the students used the ComicBook! app to make speech bubbles with the words they wanted to say.  Then, these images were loaded into iMovie to create the finished project.  Other students simply loaded the pictures directly into iMovie and added words there.  Finally, music was added along with a credits slide.

Our students learned many skills by making book trailers.  They learned how to determine important ideas from the text and convey these ideas in a creative way.  The students practiced using a graphic organizer to organize their thoughts.  They learned how to modify their Google search to include images that were acceptable to use and how to cite their image sources.  Finally, the students had fun using the iPads and the ComicBook! and iMovie apps! 

Here are a few of our trailers:

The completed book trailers have been loaded into Destiny, our library catalog system.  When students are looking for books to read in Destiny, they can watch trailers created by Harrison students!  The book trailers can also be found on our library website:  https://sites.google.com/site/hsd36libraryresources/homepage/book-trailers-2015.

Enjoy and happy reading!!

LEGO Club!

Earlier in February, we started an after school LEGO club at Harrison School!  We've had two meetings already and so far, it's been fantastic!!

 

Why did we decide to start this club?  There are so many benefits to building with LEGOS.  When students build with LEGOS, they have improved fine motor skills.  They learn cooperation and problem solving skills.  They have increased creativity and a boost in confidence.  And, most important, the students have FUN while all of this learning is taking place!!  Building with LEGOS is the perfect STEM activity for elementary age students.

Logistics of our club: In order to purchase our LEGOS, we started a Donor's Choose campaign.  Local families and strangers from far away donated to our project which became fully funded in January.  Also, two families saw our Donor's Choose project and decided to donate a VERY large amount of LEGOS that they already had.  Combined with the LEGOS purchased through Donor's Choose project, we had more than enough to start our club!

Our club meets two times per month after school for one hour in the library.  We opened the club up to students in grades 1-4 and we started with 30 members (with 20 more on the waiting list).  After our first meeting, we decided to bump up our numbers to 42 because we realized that we had the space to accommodate more students.  We probably won't be able to add any more because the library is quite full with 42.  For next year, we may split up the club into smaller grades (i.e. grades 1-2, 3-4) so that we can accommodate more students.  During our first meeting, we had the students decide on appropriate rules to help our club run smooth.  We also begin each meeting with a small snack.

Each meeting will have a different theme.  Students can building something related to the theme, or they can build something different.  Our first theme was "build something that flies" and our second theme was "build a creature".  If students decide to build something related to the theme, we will display it on the counter around the circulation desk for all to see until our next meeting.

  

It is amazing to see the students working together, using their creativity, being totally engaged the entire time, and having FUN!!  At the end of our second meeting, we asked the students what they liked about LEGO club so far.  Here are some of their responses:  "being creative" "building with a friend" "the themes" "being able to build anything, not just the theme" and "seeing what everyone else builds".

We can't wait to see all of the great ideas that our students come up with in future meetings!

Mock Caldecott Unit

Welcome back!  For the month of January, our students in grades 2-4 participated in a Mock Caldecott Unit!  For this unit, we read six books that were contenders for the 2015 Caldecott Award.  Then, the students voted for which book they thought should win the award and which books should be the honor (runner-up) book.  Finally, students had to tell why they chose the books that they did.  The six books we read were:

This is the document that the students used to vote with:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wn4NNCU-RfxsFzRSwJmJbVp8hoCtO_dbPjCa6dtb-X0/edit?usp=sharing

We were excited to find out that The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend won the actual Caldecott Award and Sam and & Dave Dig a Hole was an honor book!  These were two of our favorites as well!!

Our friends from Old Bethpage Elementary School in New York are reading the same six books that we read and then we hope to Skype with them at the end of February.  We can't wait to compare notes and see if students in both schools liked the same books!

We will definitely do this unit again next year as there were so many benefits!  Students were exposed to high quality literature.  They had fun reading the stories with a purpose in mind...to rate the books for their illustrations and overall quality.  The students had to justify their choices through writing.  Finally, it was fun seeing which books won for our school and then which books won the actual award!