Library Media Program Link Elementary School

P.A.R.P. (Parents As Reading Partners)

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE LIBRARY MEDIA PROGRAM?

A monthly summary of literature appreciation, language arts and 
information literacy skills taught to the students in each
 grade during library class.

NAME THE GENRE - Great way to help children learn the genre of the books they read.

SPRING 2008

Kindergarten

The kindergarteners enjoyed watching Peter grow older in our Ezra Jack Keats author study. They made personal connections, predictions and inferences about his life experiences. The kindergartners learned the difference between fiction and nonfiction books. After selecting their library books, they explain to the class why they choose that particular book and identify it as a fiction or nonfiction book. The children also learned about the spine label, and how easy fiction and nonfiction books are arranged in the library. When you read them a fiction book, ask them what shelf the book would go on in the library (Fiction books are arranged by the letters of the author’s last name). We began a Milne author study, which incorporates original storytelling by the children. Ask your children how Winnie-The-Pooh got his name.

Kindergarteners have been working on comprehension skills by listening to various picture books. They are sequencing stories and retelling the beginning, middle and end by using transparencies and by acting out the tales. The students recognize the cause and effect of specific events in the Beatrice Potter stories, and Where the Wild Things Are. They understand cause and effect in their own lives when discussing following rules and health issues. They are very good at determining the author’s purpose, problem solving, and making personal connections!

One rainy day, we wondered why there were so many worms on the driveway. So the children told me to find the answer in a nonfiction book. The kindergartners applied KWL to this nonfiction worm book. They relied on their prior knowledge to tell the class what they already knew about worms. They visualized that when it rains the water fills their home so they inferred that worms have to come up to breathe. They had many other questions about worms: What do they eat? Are they insects? How do they move? How do they see? Why are they slimy? After reading the book, the children shared what they learned. However, some of the questions where left unanswered. So we read another book about worms, which gave the class additional information. Then we looked in an online encyclopedia to learn even more. Presently, they are creating a worm book about what they learned in their research.

First Grade
As we read fiction, the students determine the PYP traits of each of the characters involved in the story. The students retold Swimmy using transparencies. Then they drew and wrote about the beginning, middle and end of the story. They also included the problem and solution of the tale in their storyboards. Tolerance was discussed in Leo Lionni’s “Tico and the Golden Wings”. William Steig’s Amos & Boris began a study on Fact vs Fiction about whales which was followed by Dear Mr. Blueberry and Humphrey, the Lost Whale. The first graders were great problem-solvers when trying to help Humphrey. Ask them how he was saved? This book really got the students thinking about whale questions so we read “What is a whale?” and found more facts in an Encyclopedia and a web site.

Second Grade
Second graders learned about biographies by reading about famous African Americans who changed America. The students explored the civil rights movement with books like The story of Ruby Bridges, The bus ride that changed history: the story of Rosa Park and Freedom on the menu. Second graders finished up an information literacy unit on the parts of a book which includes learning how to use the spine label, title page, table of contents, index and glossary. In conjunction with using the glossary and index, students identified the keyword in a question to help them access the answer in the book. Now, they are practicing using guidewords in the dictionary and encyclopedia to access information. They are able to identify keywords in questions, which they use to access information in an encyclopedia. Shortly, they will apply these research skills to locate information for their animal reports.

Third Grade
The third graders have learned how to apply keyword search strategies to locate information in the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog), online encyclopedia, EBSCO’s Searchasaurus (an online, full-text magazine index and encyclopedia), and KidsClick (a kid’s search engine for the Internet). EBSCO’s Searchasaurus can be accessed from our Link homepage and by using the user name and password linkel. They learned how to write limericks and use the thesaurus on Microsoft Word.

Fourth Grade
Fourth graders recently finished a unit on the Internet, which includes safety rules, and computer ethics. The students learned about ethical behavior when using information technology by discussing scenarios that deal with privacy, property and appropriate use. They evaluated web sites to determine the accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage. The students also applied the three different ways to access web sites: URLs (web site address), hyperlinks and search engines (KidsClick). They practiced navigation skills and scanning for information to answer specific questions on authors’ web sites accessed through URLs. Using KidsClick, the students located web sites by utilizing category and keyword search strategies. Presently we are having discussions in library on the Causes of the American Revolution: Interpreting Political Cartoons.

Fifth Grade
The fifth graders are independent researchers and are able to locate the answer to any questions. It is not important to know everything as long as you know where to find the answers! They all did a great job locating information from multiple resources for their fifth grade classroom research project and created a “Works Cited” page! Fifth grade also learned how to create a power point Book Review. Now the students are learning to recognize literary devices like similes, metaphors and personification in poetry and stories. In the next few weeks, they will be exploring the sounds of poetry including alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia.

Winter 2008

Kindergarten
The children are being immersed in cumulative folktales through storytelling, creative puppetry, music, choral reading, dramatic reenactment, felt board and transparency retelling. Students are developing auditory and visual memory skills, questioning techniques and building their vocabulary. They are practicing oral language and conceptual skills through the retelling and reenactment of stories in proper sequence. The children compared and contrasted several tales including The Gingerbread Man, The Stinky Cheese Man, The Fat Cat, Bark, George and Little Riding Hood. The children also practiced sight words through choral reading. After having the cumulative tale, There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, read to them, the story was recreated with puppets and music. Kindergartners used their problem–solving and questioning skills to aid the "Old Lady". They created their own "Old Lady" puppets and retold the story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Since both The Fat Cat and The Old Lady…are folktales, the students came up with their own happy endings.

First Grade
First graders compared and contrasted two similar books, Olive Button is a Sissy and Amazing Grace which dealt with teasing and bullying. They listen to the nonfiction picture book, Stars beneath your bed: the story of dust, and wrote all the facts they learned from the book. The students discussed describing words and figurative language in many of this quarter’s books. When asked to draw a monster and use adjectives to describe it, they realized that they all visualized different kinds of monsters. Then, as I read, Go away, big green monster, they illustrated the description in the book and found that their monsters all looked alike. The students realized that using describing words in our writing help us all get the same picture in our mind. While reading And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, students identified describing words and then they created their own sentences with describing words. As always when listening to stories, they will be determining the author’s purpose, making predictions and inferences.

Second Grade
Second graders learned about historical fiction by examining books about the Mayflower voyage and immigration using various comprehension skills: KWL, text-self connection, and questioning. Through further interactive read-alouds they learned to identify science fiction and mysteries. The students enjoyed hearing about how scientists got many facts wrong about dinosaurs in the nonfiction picture book, Boy, were we wrong about dinosaurs! They wrote all the facts they learned from the book.

The second graders learned to recognize cause and effect in the story, Sam, Bangs and moonshine. Ask your children what “moonshine” meant and what Sam learned because she told too much “moonshine” especially to Thomas.  After reading this story, the children were taught how to use the “Reading Counts Program” on the computer. The children may now select books from a special section in the library and answer questions about the book they read on the computer. If children do not get 7 out of 10 right, that means they are selecting books which are too difficult for them.

Third Grade
Your children did very well on their assessment of how to access an online database, the library’s electronic book catalog or OPAC, using four strategies: author, title, subject and keyword. Any questions that they had difficulty with were re-taught and now they are all experts at locating books on any topic. Go to the public library and let your children use their OPAC skills.

Fourth Grade
Fourth graders applied various comprehension strategies after listening to several nonfiction selections from Ben Franklin’s Almanac, and Mistakes that Worked.  The comprehension strategies included: personal connections, visualization, main idea/details, questioning, inferring, cause/effect, and compare/contrast. Students are developing information literacy skills by accessing information using a variety of print and online resources. They are increasing their knowledge and usage of the print and online atlas, encyclopedia, and EBSCO’s Searchasaurus, an online full-text periodical index. Students are learning to identify keywords in questions that they then use to access information in an online encyclopedia. Then they determine which word they need to scan for from the question to locate the answer. Utilizing EBSCO’s Searchasaurus, they will learn to perform a category and keyword search in a periodical database to locate a magazine article. After reading the article, they will determine the main idea and at least three details. This EBSCO database can be accessed from home off of the Homework Helper page using the user name and password linkel.

Fifth Grade
The fifth graders are learning a six-step research process known nationally as the "Big 6 Skills" which will prepare them to be life-long information users. They are presently applying this process in their Social Studies classes to write a research report on the Westward Expansion in America.  Now that the students can determine appropriate resources and access the information using keyword searching, they are practicing how to take notes from nonfiction sources by identifying the main ideas, listing details and paraphrasing information. In the next few weeks, the children will learn how to formulate focused research questions and/or statements, break down a topic into key concepts, recall synonyms and related terms and locate information for their 5^th grade research report. To further prepare them for the research project, we discussed how to avoid plagiarism and they learned how to use a guide to write a proper Works Cited page.

Fall 2007

The PTA Cultural Arts Program, Lou Del Bianco: folktales and music from around the world, supported the Library curriculum for first, second and third grades. First grade has been discussing the importance of reading and they just finished up a unit on fables. They were amazing at determining the morals of these stories. Then we related the fable moral to their  lives. Read some with them at http://www.aesopfables.com/ and help them to figure out the lesson. Now we started a unit on rhyming and writing couplets with Frederick and Dr. Seuss’ McElligot’s Pool.

Second graders are listening to and examining genres: realistic fiction, fantasy, science fiction, folktales, historical fiction, and informational books. They enjoyed changing realistic fiction stories to fantasies and visa versa. Presently, they are immersed in folktales through Reader’s Theatre where all the children act out popular folktales while the audience determines the lesson. Go to our P.A.R.P. (Parents as Reading Partners) page at http://www.ccsd.edu/link/PARP/PARP.htm and enjoy some folktales from around the world with your child.

In our third grade folktale unit, the students compared three similar folktales from three different countries. They determined the lessons of each tale and examined how the folktale changed as it traveled from one country to another. Presently, they are learning about and writing "shape poems" in preparation for the Storm King Sculpture trip. We will also learn about the artists and their work before we go. After the trip, students will use photographs as a source of reference to create their own "shape poems" about a specific sculpture they enjoyed.
            The students in fourth grade began the year by trying to guess what the animal was in the story, Precious Pet. While listening, they recorded pertinent information that would help them to draw a conclusion. Through group work, they narrowed down their predictions and shared with all. They determined the author’s purpose in Mr. Peabody’s Apple and discussed the cause/effect. After listening to several folktales, students used questioning and inferring to solve problems within the tale. In Up North at the Cabin, they made personal connections and used various reading strategies to determine the meaning of new vocabulary in the text.  In the Halloween story, Reverse Curse, students used clues in the story to make predictions which they later confirmed or changed. Ask your child, which one of the stories they liked best.

            Fifth graders shared some interesting discussions after trying to figure out the author’s purpose for The Three Questions based on a Leo Tolstoy story, Old Turtle and the Broken Truth and Zen Shorts. Afterwards, each student wrote a short essay on their favorite story. They included what they had learned and how these stories had changed their way of thinking. In George Washington, Spymaster students listened to nonfiction selections and took notes to answer specific questions. Ask your child, how the colonists won the American Revolution by spying? In the Halloween story, Widow’s Broom, students used clues in the story to make predictions which they later confirmed or changed.

The kindergartners are making personal connections and predictions in the stories, Owen, Little Apple with the Star Inside, What Was I Afraid Of? and “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. The children learned the difference between fiction and nonfiction and are identifying the genre for their library books.  They shared and recited their favorite nursery rhymes. In a couple of stories, they identified the rhyming words. Then in The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon, the students made predictions about what happened to the dish and spoon in nursery rhyme land. Ask your child what happened to them?

P.A.R.P (Parents as Reading Partners) 2007/08

The theme this year is "Reading around the World". The kick off was the PTA Cultural Arts performance called "Bodacious Books" which focused on books around the world as well as Lou Del Bianco: folktales and music from around the world.
    In a couple of weeks, your children will be bringing home this year’s PARP booklet. To encourage reading, this year PARP will be a year long event of reading with students having different activities each month, instead of each week. As the students read their way around the world, they will keep track of all the books read in their booklets as well as on a huge map displayed in the main hallway linked to books from various countries. The Spring finale is a “Challenging World Tour" where the children will get a passport stamped at each of the seven continents; stations set up with geography and country related activities.
    Please participate in this worthwhile effort with your child to promote their reading skills. There is nothing more valuable that you can do for your child than to show them the importance of reading. Please go to our PARP webpage (http://www.ccsd.edu/link/PARP/PARP.htm) to see some of the great things we have done with the children in the past and to enjoy some great stories with your children.

If you have any questions about the PARP program or PARP booklets please don’t hesitate to call or email Ms Johnson, Link Library Media Specialist (djohnson@ccsd.edu) or your PTA representative, Mrs. Galit Maayani.

The more you READ, the more you KNOW! 
The more you KNOW, the more you GROW!
The SMARTER you GROW, the SMARTER your VOICE,
When SPEAKING your mind or making your CHOICE.