What's Happening at the BSS Library?

I love all of Kevin Henkes' books, from his mouse picture books like Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse and Chrysanthemum to his chapter books like The Year of Billy Biller and Olive's Ocean .  The Penny series fall in between; it is an illustrated beginners chapter book (with a mouse character of course!) In Penny and Her Marble , Penny is on a walk and finds a beautiful blue marble in her neighbor's lawn.  And Penny thinks that certainly her neighbor Mrs. Goodwin is too old to play with marbles, so it couldn't belong to her. Right? So she takes it, and at first she is amazed at how beautiful and blue and shiny it is.  But when she sees Mrs. Goodwin in her yard--in the exact spot where the marble was--she starts to wonder if Mrs. Goodwin is looking for the marble.  Feelings of guilt overwhelm Penny and she refuses to eat (even sugar cookies!) and cannot sleep. After reading Penny and Her Marble to second graders, I like to challenge them and ask why they think I choos...

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 Ri...

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 t...