Iowa Children's Choice Award Books & ThingLink

It's that time again--time for us to explore the state award books and start reading our way through the list. To promote the titles and raise interest, this year's titles are featured in ThingLink images that connect to book trailers.

Check out these Iowa Children's Choice Award nominees:




Enjoy the trailers--and when you're ready to try one of the nominees, be sure to stop by the library and check out a copy. Remember, you're eligible to vote for the building and state-wide winner when you read at least two books from the list. See you soon!

1-Thing Wednesday: 2017 - 2018 State Award Nominees

The state award nominees for the coming 2017 - 2018 school year were announced earlier in the year. Our K-2 students will read and listen to the Iowa Goldfinch Awards:

And our Grades 3-5 students will read from and listen to the Iowa Children's Choice Award nominees: 

Over the course of the coming school year, students are encouraged to read at least two of the nominees from their lists, and should they complete the reading by late February/early March, they will be eligible to vote for the building and state-wide winner. Feel free to read any of the books over the summer, and stay tuned for many activities related to these great books!

Statewide Book Award Winners Announced

Earlier in March, K - 2nd grade students voted for the Iowa Goldfinch Award book winner after several weeks of read alouds and activities. Favorites like Ivan: The Remarkable Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole were contenders, but in the end, Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio was the DC Elementary building winner.

Students in Grades 3 - 5 also voted on the Iowa Children's Choice Award book after listening to read alouds of I Survived: The Great Chicago Fire, Dash, and Loot. If students had also read a second nominee, they were eligible to vote. Winning the Iowa Children's Choice Award at DC Elementary was Loot by Jude Watson.

Iowa teacher librarians met today for their annual conference and state-wide winners were announced. A drum roll please. . . the Iowa Goldfinch winner was The Book with No Pictures by BJ Novak. Statewide, 152 elementary schools participated in the voting with almost 6,250 votes submitted!

And the Iowa Children's Choice winner was I Survived: The Great Chicago Fire by Lauren Tarshis. This book was the second place vote getter among DC Elementary students. Statewide, 218 schools participated in the voting with more than 17,100 votes submitted! 

Stay tuned for the announcement of the 2017 - 2018 state award nominees. Remember, if you read two books on the list, you'll be eligible to vote. These great books make for some good summer reading!

Iowa Children's Choice Award Read-Aloud Recap

Third, fourth, and fifth graders have recently completed their work with an Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee. (You can read about our pre-reading activities in Google Classroom HERE.)

So what did students do with their read alouds? A whole lot of reading comprehension strategies! Each week we broke down the reading to focus one of five different areas: summarizing, visualizing, making connections, questioning, and determining importance. Each of these was applicable to that week's reading, regardless of the read aloud, which made planning all that much easier.

We started with a summarizing activity called Somebody Wanted...But...So...Then. 

You can access the handout HERE.

We followed up our summarizing work with visualization. Using large pieces of bulletin board paper on the tables, students could draw distinct scenes or images from that day's read aloud. Not surprisingly, papers from class to class depicted similar moments from the reading.

Our work took us back into Google Classroom for an activity related to making connections. As they listened to the reading, students typed connections into a Google doc and turned in their work prior to check out.

You can access the handout HERE.

For our questioning activity, students worked in their table groups to write thoughtful questions. Each table had question stems they could use as examples, and they could also draft their own original questions.

You can access the handout HERE.

Finally, we wrapped up our work with a determining importance activity. Students had the choice to draw or write about an important event from the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Below are samples from Dash and Loot.

Now that we're finished with our read alouds, students will be using the books to write sample book reviews in Destiny Quest before going ahead with their own book reviews on books of their choosing. And of course we'll be voting in late February for an Iowa Children's Choice Award winner. Stay tuned for our building winner!

ICCA Pre-reading Activities

With our Iowa Children's Choice Award read alouds coming up, students in 3rd - 5th grade accessed some background knowledge related to the books. All information was accessible to them in Google Classroom, where students read or watched summaries, author interviews, and related connections.

THIRD GRADE
This group of students will be working with Lauren Tarshis's book I Survived the Great Chicago Fire, 1871.

Along with the book trailer, third graders also watched a video that explained some of the lessons learned from the Great Chicago Fire. 

From the author's website, students also read material related to Tarshis's research process and the I Survived series itself. 

You can access the full document HERE.

FOURTH GRADE
These students will be reading and listening to the book Dash by Kirby Larson.

In addition to watching the book trailer and reading a short summary and character description, students learned a little about what life may have been like in a Japanese internment camp from the perspective of someone who was there. Densho, an organization that works to tell the story of Japanese-Americans' internment during World War II, includes archived video that students accessed.

FIFTH GRADE

The book Loot by Jude Watson is the book that 5th graders will listen and respond to during this unit.

Students watched a book trailer and another short video with the author talking about her book. Also, because the story includes cursed gemstones, 5th graders learned a little about the Hope Diamond and what some people believe to be the curse upon it from a Learn360 video.

Now that students have gained some background knowledge related to their books, we're ready to start reading and talking about them. More Google Classroom activities and hands-on activities to follow!

State Award Winning Books

Every year students across Iowa participate in a democratic process of our own as we read and then vote on our state award books. The Iowa Goldfinch Award is given to a book that's suitable for students in grades K - 3 while the Iowa Children's Choice Award focuses on books for students in grades 3 - 6. Students are to read--or have read to them--at least two of the nominated books to be eligible to vote. Here were this year's nominees:

Since the fall, students have been reading and listening to many of the books, and the voted in their respective buildings in March. At Dallas Center Elementary, the K - 2 students voted for Ball by Mary Sullivan to be the Goldfinch winner, and students at South Prairie voted for Memoirs of a Hamster by Devin Scillian.

The DC Elementary students in grades 3 - 5 students voted for Duke by Kirby Larson to be the Children’s Choice while North Ridge students chose Dog Diaries: Ginger by Kate Kilmo as their winner.

State winners were announced in early April at a statewide librarian conference. The Goldfinch Award winner for the state was The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt; the Iowa Children’s Choice winner was Duke by Kirby Larson.

Titles with Trailers Tuesday: The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall by Mary Downing Hahn

Today's (late!) post features a former Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee, The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall by Mary Downing Hahn.

Here's what Booklist has to say about the story: "Twelve-year-old book lover Florence is thrilled to be leaving Miss Medleycoate's Home for Orphan Girls to live at Crutchfield Hall with her newly discovered great-aunt, great-uncle, and cousin James. Six months before, James's sister Sophia died in an accident, and Florence quickly discovers that Sophia's ghost is haunting Crutchfield to punish James for his part in her death. Sophia is full of malice and pride, and as she grows in strength, Florence fears for James's safety, yet she feels powerless to resist Sophia's control..."

This book, like many others by Mary Downing Hahn, features supernatural characters and is full of suspense. On her official website, you can read about this book and others you may have read, including The Old Willis Place and Wait Till Helen Comes.

If you're looking for suspenseful mysteries, you'll want to try a Mary Downing Hahn book; you won't be disappointed!

State Award Winners Announced

The Iowa Association of School Librarians met earlier this week and announced the winners of the Iowa book awards. Students across Iowa voted in March, including the elementary schools in DCG. Each building had winners, and today we learned which books were state-wide winners.

At Dallas Center Elementary, students in kindergarten through second grade chose Scaredy Squirrel has a Birthday Party, while students at South Prairie Elementary voted for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

We learned today, though, that with over 25,000 votes cast statewide, the winner of the Iowa Goldfinch Award--with 3,554 votes--was Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.

Students in Grades 3 - 5 voted on the Iowa Children's Choice Award. To be eligible to cast a vote, students must have read at least two books from the nominations list. At Dallas Center Elementary, Athlete vs. Mathlete was the building winner, and at North Ridge, The Ghost of Graylock was the top vote-getter.

And how spot-on were our building winner? Our North Ridge students voted in line with thousands of other students, who also chose Dan Poblocki's book The Ghost of Graylock as the overall winner for the year.

Books for next year's lists have already been announced; see below for the posters and links to them to get a head start on reading. 

CLICK HERE to access the poster online.

CLICK HERE to access this poster online.

Responding to Reading with ICCA Books

DC Elementary students in grades 3 - 5 have been listening to read alouds from the Iowa Children's Choice Award list: The PS Brothers by Maribeth Boelts, Saving Zasha by Randi Barrow, and Mathlete vs. Athlete by W.C. Mack.

    

During each cycle, students have different activities related to various reading strategies on which they focus. Recently, students had large pieces of paper at their tables and were asked to draw on it what they had visualized during the read aloud.

Another activity focused on making connections, and rather than return to a paper-pencil activity, students instead participated in a live back channel conversation using TodaysMeet.

Students were to make at least two connections to the read aloud, then comment using TodaysMeet. Each class had their own room in which to "meet" and comment, and using QR codes, they could easily access the site, join using a nickname, and begin commenting.

 

A partial transcript from one of the classes's conversation appears below:

Stay tuned! More response activities are coming up as we continue to work our way through the read alouds!