Book Series Promotion

During the month of December, we have been promoting various age-appropriate book series with first and second grade students. Some traditional "oldies but goodies" make the list, like Judy Moody, Junie B. Jones, Geronimo Stilton, and Nate the Great.

But students also meet some newer characters and books--like Babymouse and the Rainbow Fairies from author Daisy Meadows.

During this time, students visit different author and book websites, and they also participate in various activities, such as learning to draw Super Diaper Baby and voting in the Babymouse election.

Reading Comprehension Strategies Booklet

Students in grade 3 - 5 have been listening to these Iowa Children's Choice Award nominees:

As they've listened and discussed the stories, students have been using a reading comprehension strategies booklet to monitor their understanding of the texts. Skills such as visualizing, making connections, summarizing, and questioning are included, as are three more, all of which come from the Common Core Curriculum.

Click here to access a copy of the reading comprehension strategies booklet.

Author Visit

On Thurs. Nov. 8, Arkansan children's author David M. Sargent, Jr. visited Dallas Center Elementary School to share his books and talk about the importance of reading and writing. David also brought the main characters of his books to the assembly--his dogs Spike, Tatum, Daphne, and Emma!

 
After sharing stories about his dogs and their antics that inspired his books, David personally signed books, posters, and photographs for students. Principal Mrs. Nerem generously purchased an autographed bookmark for every student, and David donated several signed items to the library as well. It was a great afternoon!

Reading Celebration at Dallas Center Elementary

 
 


Students at Dallas Center Elementary met their first quarter behavior goal, and to celebrate, athletes from the State Champion DCG Boys' Baseball Team and the State Runners-Up DCG Girls' Softball Team joined students at the celebration assembly. Later, the athletes visited classrooms where they read their favorite children's books to the students. Way to go, DCE students! Keep up the good work!

ABC Stations

Students in first grade read several ABC books and then talked about the importance of ABC order in the library. After reading LMNO Peas by Keith Baker, students created their own book--More LMNO Peas:

To wrap up their work, students rotated through several ABC stations. In table groups, students arranged pictures of book characters in alphabetical order, stacked cups with words on them in alphabetical order, placed pictures of book spines in shelf order, and arranged words from a magnetic poetry kit into alphabetical order. Other centers included a coloring station, a Lego stack station, and another card station.

Look Who's Visiting the Library!

Well-loved book characters are making an appearance at the library this fall. Stop by to see them!

IA Children's Choice Award Book Find Activity

Students in 3rd - 5th grades participated in a book find/scavenger hunt activity as a way to learn more about this year's IA Children's Choice Award nominees. Using the clues in the handout below, they moved about the library to see if they could match descriptions with book titles.

Click here to access a copy of the book find activity.

Animals Should NOT Check Out Library Books!

After discussing book care and watching a presentation from the Elementary Library Routines wikispace about why animals should not check out library books, students in the third grade classes chose their own animals to write about and illustrated why they too should not check out library books.

Above, students in Mrs. Nims's class at Dallas Center Elementary 

show off their animal book care pages.

More Displays: Hungry for Books!

I like this display because it has a 3D effect with the balloons. It may also be the reason that I don't like this display. We'll see how it holds up. My favorite part was putting holes in the book covers to show that our Hungry Caterpillar loves books!

ICCA: Blending techy with creativity for our decor

We've decided to take a break from working on aligning our curriculum to the Common Core to do something fun: decorate! We spent a day last week making these large posters to hang in our libraries to promote the Iowa Children's Choice Award books. We want to give a huge thank you to Mrs. Nase at The Book Bug for inspiring our creation of these posters. Check out her media specialist blog for great ideas.

New Reading Corner at DC Elementary

The Dallas Center Elementary library has a new addition--a reading corner!

The new book slings will feature many of the new books to the library, and the milk crate seating will make for a comfortable spot for up to 4 students.  Thank you to the blog Penny Carnival for the book sling idea, and The Boutons' blog for the milk crate seating!  The reading corner will be one of the new library centers students will experience when they return later in August.

Discovery Bottles as a Library Center

Thanks to some wonderful blogs by other teacher librarians and elementary teachers, we were inspired to create our own discovery bottles to use as a library center. A friend and colleague--along with our children and their friends--joined us to put all sort of trinkets into our bottles of colorful rice!

Once we had everything prepared, we made DC-G bottles in red and white, beach bottles, themed bottles (food, colors, nature), and a magnetic discovery bottle. Look for them this fall as a library center along with many other new additions!

Coach Sloth is visiting South Prairie

Coach Ryan Sloth will be at South Prairie Elementary in Grimes on Friday May 11^th. He is helping to kick off our reading celebration. He is a children’s book author, actor, and athlete; he currently works with the Barnstormers and writes children’s books. 

He has written two books that kids have been reading in the library. Kids can purchase a book from Coach Sloth, and he will bring them and autograph them for kids during his visit. 

     

His website is here: http://www.coachsloth.com/

Spine Label Poetry! Celebrating National Poetry Month

Our 4th graders were given the challenge to compose poems using only the titles of books. To me, using literature as the inspiration is such a great idea. Three great things came from this: the enthusiasm from the kids, fun poems, and kids discovered books they normally may not have picked up. Check out a few here!