What's Happening at the BSS Library?

Blue Week at BSS kicked off on Monday, April 24th.  I have been reading a variety of books highlighting the importance water has in our lives and how important it is to take care of this natural resource.  Here are some of the books I've been sharing: A Cool Drink of Water by Barbara Kerley shows photographs of people all over the world and how they get their drinking water. In Simpson Desert in Australia, it is carried by a caravan of camels. One photo depicts a woman from China filling buckets from a lake, and she uses a wooden yoke to help carry them home. I then assigned each student a page from the book, and they had to look up their place in the atlas and locate it on the world map.  Everyone then shared with the class where in the world the photograph was from. It was a fun way to learn about the world and the many methods and places that people find their drinking water. ______________________________________________________________________ A River Ran Wi

Monday, April 10th, was the middle school Battle of the Books.  It was a hard-fought battle, and "We Are Strong" came out on top.  The sixth grade team hardly missed any questions, even without star reader Lindsey Hall!  Team members included Olivia Mahoney, Regan Ball, Rowan Streeter, Ariana Korentis, and Brooke Becchetti. "We Are Strong" "7-Piece McNuggets" "Leaders of Literature"

Second graders have been listening to some Little Red Riding Hood tales from around the world.  We started with  Trina Schart Hyman's classic retelling, and most students were familiar with the events in this one.  Next we traveled to Ghana in West Africa and read  Pretty Salma  by Niki Daly, and then we read  Lon Po Po  by Ed Young, which is a Red Riding Hood tale from China.  The students were great at picking out details that were similar across the stories and also the differences.  They even created a Venn Diagrams to chart out the similarities and differences.  Finally we read a silly story called  The Cat, The Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf and Grandma  by Diane and Christyan Fox.  This story was hysterical and a nice way to end the unit.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I've been trying to read a bit of poetry to each of my classes. I tried to find a variety of poems from several sources, and some students really seem to enjoy listening! Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reverso Poems uses a very cool concept: each poem is written a second time, but in reverse order.  The entire meaning changes when viewing the poem this way. These are some great poetry collections written for children:

Since April is National Poetry Month and Opening Day was Monday, it seemed like a good time to read Ernest L. Thayer's poem, "Casey at the Bat."  This poem was written in 1888, and the language is a bit antiquated, requiring students to use context clues to decipher some of the vocabulary. I read the poem to 5th & 6th graders, leaving out the last stanza, which reads: The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate; He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate. And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow. I then asked the students to write the final stanza, predicting the outcome of the game.  I asked them to write the stanza in the same rhyming pattern as the rest of the poem (AABB), and to share what they wrote with the class. I then read them the final stanza: Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somew

I'm reposting my review of A Long Walk to Water from a couple of years ago in honor of "Blue Week," which is coming up at BSS the week of April 24th.  I will be sharing many books about water during Blue Week-- how we use water, how we can conserve water, and people who study water and have brought many of the creatures who make their home in the water more familiar to us. A Long Walk to Water is also one of this year's Middle School Battle of the Books titles (coming April 10th!).  I hope the students enjoyed it as much as I did! A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park: I started reading this book because it looked like a quick read and was set in Sudan, an area I did not know much about. I had heard about the “Lost Boys” of Sudan, but was not very familiar with the history behind them. Plus, I loved Linda Sue Park’s  A Single Shard , which earned her a Newbery Medal.  This book is a dual narrative, meaning two different characters alternated in the te

We talked about folktales in first grade this week, how “folk” means people and “tale” means story.  And how a long time ago, before computers or video games or televisions and even before books, people used to tell stories for entertainment.  These stories were passed along through the generations, and details about the countries/cultures from  where the story originated became a part of these stories.  Tikki Tikki Tembo is a Chinese folktale which explains why Chinese families give their children very short names. It was fun reading Arlene Mosel's version of this tale aloud, and students chimed in every time I had to read the main character’s long, 50-letter name: Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo- chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.  We talked about how long their names were in comparison.  Some were short (4 letters) and others were long (10 letters).  A classic!

For over a year now, I've been working on dividing the fiction section into genres.  While it was easy for me to find books in this section by author, students who were browsing generally did not care so much about who the author was.  They would ask: "Where's the fantasy books?" or "Do you have any mysteries?" So I went through every book in the entire fiction and assigned it a genre, entered it in the online catalog, and labeled it accordingly.  Now when students ask where the sports books are, I can point them to an entire section.  I made sections for Realistic Fiction, Mysteries, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Sports Fiction, Action/Adventure/Survival, Animal Stories, Humor and Horror/Suspense. I am hoping not only does it make it easier for them to browse, but maybe they will try new books from that genre (or maybe branch out and read some from another genre they don't usually read).  Maybe those kids who ALWAYS reach for a Diary

It was down to Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla in the finals.  BSS students were divided...there were many fans of each of these books.  But Gaston was the champ! Our students enjoyed voting on the iPads, using the QR codes posted in the library to help them find the correct website. Voting took place all over the country, and the story of the bulldog family and the poodle family won over many people.  Here is a summary of the book provided by the publisher: A bulldog and a poodle learn that family is about love, not appearances in this adorable doggy tale from  New York Times  bestselling author Kelly DiPucchio and illustrator Christian Robinson. This is the story of four puppies: Fi-Fi, Foo-Foo, Ooh-La-La, and Gaston. Gaston works the hardest at his lessons on how to be a proper pooch. He sips— never slobbers!  He yips— never yaps!  And he walks with grace— never races!  Gaston fits right in with his poodle sisters. Bu