Draper Elementary

Our theme for the year is Book A Trip. Each month in the media center we are going to take a trip. This month we went to Asia. We display the books about Asia.On the white board we display pictures of the people, animals, plants, resources found in the country. We also show a short slide show on the country. We also have a picture of a famous landmark and the students guess where that landmark is located and write there answer down on a piece of paper and put it in a jar and on monday morning we draw a name out of the jar who's answer is correct and they come to the media center for a prize. The students are having alot of fun guessing where the landmarks are located.

Title: Jerry Seinfeld Halloween
The students enjoy this book a lot.

We have being doing lessons on book care.

Oak Hollow Elementary

Recommended Read-a-louds

            Home Run the story of Babe Ruth by Burleigh –This book offers a look at this famous athlete from the perspective of a boy as well as his fans.  There are vintage baseball cards on every page that give many details about Babe Ruth's many accomplishments.  If reads almost like a poem so I read it slowly and the classes loved each page. This one is also beautifully illustrated with oil paintings by Mike Wimmer that I point this out before I get into the story. 

            Henry's Freedom Box by Levine -  this story is based on a true story of how a Virginia slave escaped to freedom by shipping himself to Philadelphia in  a wooden crate in 1849.

Pair & Share Topic: Historical Fiction

We have many wonderful historical fiction picture books in our collection.  Students are required to do reports on historical fiction chapter books and they don't always get to appreciate the picture books that are just as educational.  We show several and tell a bit about each.  We chose some to read the following week.  There is a page in each book with background for the story and I discussed this before reading the book to the class. This turned out to be a great way to share the books over a 2 week period. we have books about:

·         the war of 1812 – Sisters of Scitiate Light by Krensky

·         Brooker T. Washington – More than anything Else by Bradby

·         The Oregon Trail – Wagons West! By Roy

·         Plains Indian culture/Chief Crazy Horse – Crazy Horse's Vision by Bruchac

·         The Revolutionary War – John, Paul, George & Ben by Lane Smith

·         Blizzard of 1888 – Terrible Storm by Carol Otis Hurst

·         The Civil War – Pink and Say by Polacco

·         WWII – The Unbreakable Code by Hunter and also The Butterfly by Polacco

·         Post WWII period – Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming (very uplifting !) 
Way to prove that Everybody books are REALLY for EVERYBODY!

Sprucewood

Title:                      “Goodnight Goon: a Petrifying Parody”    

Author:                    Michael Rex                                                                      

Grade Level:            All

Title:                      “Goodnight Moon”

Author:                    Margaret Wise Brown

Grade level:             All

We explained that a parody is when you take an author or work and imitate very closely the language & style in a new work or book.  Sometimes it can even take on a comic effect or can be exaggerated.  We read both of the above books to the kids and had them tell us which one they liked best.  We also discussed the similarities.  Most of the kids liked the newer book best and they especially enjoyed the pictures.      

Title:                      “Halloween”

Author:                   Jerry Seinfeld

Grade Level:          3-6

We use the CD and let it tell the story while we show the pictures.  We have done this every year since the book came out and the kids love to hear it over and over.  It is more fun for them to hear his actual voice…he is much more of a comedian than I!

Crescent Elementary

We had the library ghost visit our library throughout the month of October and leave clues for Halloween or mystery books we enjoy in our library.

        We started the month out by reading to our classes the book “The library Ghost” by Carole Boston Weatherford. We told our students that the library ghost would be visiting our library and leaving clues for them to find. The clues would give them hints about a particular book and if they could tell us the title of the book from the clues they would get a Halloween treat bag. We choose mystery books for the older grades such as “Dollhouse Murders” or “Wait till Helen Comes” and for the younger grades “Scary, Scary Halloween” or “Hallo-wiener.”

     The students had to work alone, they couldn’t ask anyone but they could use the computer and they had to give us there guess before they left the library. If someone guessed the title of the book we would choose another book and put out more clues for that book. We then displayed the book that had been guessed along with the clues, in hopes that it would spark some excitement to read that book. It worked!!  The kids seemed to really enjoy this.

 This sounds so FUN!  You guys are GREAT!

Altara

Title: "Sipping Spiders Through A Straw
Campfire Songs for Monsters"

Lyrics by Kelly Dipucchio
Pictures by Gris Grimly

We read and even sang some of the lyrics to these monster campfire songs to the 4th - 6th grades. We would read the title of the song and see if the kids could guess what tune it was sung too. For example, the song "My Delicious Frankenstein" was sung to the tune of "Oh, My Darling Clementine".The kids absolutely loved the song, "Do Your Guts Hang Low". We passed out copies of the words to the song and we sang it three times, first at regular speed, second a little faster, and third as fast as we could possibly sing it. We think this will become a Halloween tradition at Altara from now on.

Sunrise Elementary

Title: The Halloween House
Author: Erica Silverman

This book is about 2 men that break out of Jail and end up spending a night in a Haunted House. We have the recording of this book that is great with music and all. The kids love it. After we talk about scary things you might see in a haunted house and how it is a counting book and also a rhyming book. It's great for Halloween.

Title: Hilda and the Mad Scientist
Author: Adam Addie

This story is about Hilda whose Mottol is "I go where I'm needed and leave when I'm not." So she goes to help out a Mad Scientist and that's when the fun begins. It is great for all ages. After the story we talked about what went wrong. 1.
Cover Image

Alta View Elementary

Halloween
By Jerry Seinfeld
The book Halloween by Jerry Seinfeld has become a tradition at Alta View. The students love listening to the CD of Jerry Seinfeld's vision of Halloween.
The kids can identify with his rules of Halloween from what makes a good costume to what is acceptable trick or treat candy. We let them listen to the Cd of the book, because we couldn't read the book quite like Jerry Seinfeld.

Draper Elementary

Draper Elementary Library's theme this year is "Where in the World Can You Find..." We have interesting displays set up from all over the world! We have contests and games going where we show the kids a picture of something famous in the world and they have to guess where it is. A big map on the wall helps us track our discoveries like the Big Wall of China and Big Ben. Kids gather around the map and chatter about the world!

Willow Springs Elementary

Title: There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat!
Author: Lucille Colandro
Illustrated: Jared Lee
We used this book in two different way depending on the grade level. For the first grade we made a large cutout of the old lady and of the various things she swallowed. As we read the story we dropped the different objects in her "tummy". For grades 2 and 3rd, we had a script of the different pages and gave them out to the students. Two or three students had the same script which was numbered. When a number was held up, the students with that text read their part. This was like a choral reading of the book.

I'll take a picture of her cutout and send it to you.  It is SO cute! SH

lone peak (Angela)

In grades K-4 I have been reading the book Mrs. McMurphy's pumpkin by Rick Walton and The Very Hairy Scary story by the same author. I told the student that he is an Utah Author, and lives in Provo, I pulled several of his books and had them available for them to look at.

It's so fun to listen to Angela read with her very British accent!  SH

Sunrise Elementary

Title: Bugs
Author: David T. Greenberg
Illustrated by: Lynn Munsinger
This year our theme for the Library is Bugs and Bee's so we read this book to kick it off.
This book is about insects written in Poetic Form. It explores the different things that can be done to bugs.
Bugs can be cooked, trained, grounded up and eaten. Then the author exchanges perspective and suggest what bugs might do to us.
We talked about what bugs the kids liked and don't like. The kids really enjoyed this book and laughed a lot.
We are giving out Bee bucks this year for kids that are using great library manners and helping in the library to keep the shelves neat and cleaning up. We put the "Bee Bucks" in bug catchers we got for each of the grades and will draw out 2 from each class at the end of the month.

Altara

"What Happened to Marion's Book" by Brook Berg
This is a clever story about a young hedgehog, who is not very careful with her books. She winds up destroying a book that she has checked out from the library. We then find out what she has to do to remedy the problem.
After we read the book, we had a student come up front and put on a doctors white coat, a stethoscope and a pair of glasses. We then asked the students "What do doctors do for us?" (They help us take good care of our bodies.) We then told them that we wanted them to all be "Book Doctors" this year and help us take good care of our books. We then showed a beat up discarded book and we labeled it with several diseases. ---Chronic Crayon Scribble-itis, ---Acute water wave inflammation, ---Perforated Pet Puncture Wound, ---Sticky bubble Gum Adhesion, --- Chronic Slimy Ketchup Splatter, ---Lacerated Tear of the Final Page. We would turn to the diseased pages and then ask the students what we could all do to help prevent these awful book diseases. The students loved the doctors costume and it was fun to hear what they would do to take care of their books.
We did this with Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

Willow Springs Elementary

For Halloween, we have put cutout paper pumpkins around the library. On the outside of the pumpkin is a riddle. On the inside is the answer to the riddle. The kids love looking at them as they look for books. We just used die cuts to cut the pumpkins then we taped 2 of them together on the stem so they would open! Happy Halloween from Willow Springs! (This blog was written by Susan Huff)

Sprucewood

We recently shared parts of a couple of our new books with the kids. The first one we shared was:
Title: "Tiger Shark"
Author: Deborah Nuzzolo
This book introduces the kids to tiger sharks and describes their physical characteristics and behavior. The kids figured out quickly why they are called Tiger Sharks (striped liked tiger). They thought it was interesting that the adult sharks eventually lose most of their stripes.

Title: "The Naked Mole-Rat"
Author: Jody Sullivan Rake
This is a book from the Series "Weird Animals". The kids loved the pictures of the naked mole-rat. It is such an ugly creature that some thought it was actually cute. The book describes their unique home, body, behavior and how they survive in the animal world. Naked mole-rats are mostly hairless and have sharp ugly teeth. The kids were "freaked out" that snakes like to eat naked mole-rats.
We shared these books with grades 3 & 4.

 If your kids were old enough, you could also suggest a great fiction book called The Naked Mole-Rat Letters by Mary Amato~SHuff

Oak Hollow

In September we welcomed the classes to "A World of Reading" .

We used the following books:

World Atlas for Young Explorers   912 NAT

People by P. Spier               155.2 SPI

Chronicle of the Olympics 796.48 CHR

How I learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz         E SHU

We introduced this as our Theme for the library this year.  Our book talks this year will challenge students to explore the world through books.  The map of the world shows us many countries and there are many people with different languages, foods and cultures to learn about.  We talked about the Olympics and how countries parade their flag during the opening ceremonies.  We had a flag displayed that older grades had fun trying to identify the country it represented. (Hungary). An especially relevant picture book is by Uri Shulevitz called How I learned Geography.  I showed only a couple pages from this book and told how this small boy was able to dream about the world and explore places simply by studying a large, colorful map of the world that his father brought into his home when he was a small child.  I point out that the book is autobiographical – about the life of the author/illustrator. We find the places on the map where this author was born (Poland) and lived in poverty during the war (Kazakhstan) and lives today (NewYork City).