MCBA by the Numbers

One of my goals this year has been to keep older elementary kids interested in reading. The Massachusetts Children's Book Award was instituted for this same reason, so I thought it was an easy enough way to try to achieve my goal. The premise of the program is simple: from a list of 20+ books, 4th-6th grade students read at least 5 of them, and then they get to vote on their favorite. Votes are tallied from around the state, and each participating library gets a certificate with the winning book.

We had our voting party this week, and Roller Girl was the Loker favorite - we'll have to wait a few more weeks to see what the rest of the state thought! A quick shot of our voting party spread and prize for participating:

With it being the first year, I wasn't sure what to expect, but overall, I think interest was high enough to do it again next year.

MCBA BY THE NUMBERS:

• The 25 titles that were on the list this year circulated 135 times from mid-October to mid-March 
• 22 out of 97 4th and 5th graders read at least one book as part of the contest 
• 12 students read at least 5 and were eligible to vote 
• Most books read was 17 by one eager 5th grader

As there is always room for improvement, my initial ideas to boost participation next year:

• Have the books ordered over the summer, so that readers have an extra month to participate
• Host a monthly book club to discuss a different book 
• Hopefully, enjoy a little word-of-mouth, where this year's 4th graders spread the word to their classmates!

Whoosh!

Got your attention, didn't I?

I had a great lesson with my 1st and 2nd graders for Black History Month that warranted its own post.

Whoosh! (see what I did there?) is a new book in the library which tells the story of Lonnie Johnson, an inventor who accidentally invented the Super Soaker water gun.

While I love the inspiring stories of the "usual suspects" for Black History Month (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc), I am always drawn to lesser-known people whose stories are worth knowing about. Enter Lonnie Johnson.

I thought this book would be a fun one for younger students, but after I read it for the first time, I read the back matter, where the author told of his inspiration for writing Lonnie's story. He was at a conference and the speaker asked everyone to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. Nearly everyone drew a white man with glasses and a lab coat, which was a sign for him that other stories needed to be told.

I decided to do the same thing with my classes. With no explanation, they came into library with a sheet of paper at their tables. I gave them 5 minutes to draw what they thought a scientist looked like. There were a number of glasses/lab coat scientists but I was blown away that nearly every girl drew a girl scientist. So awesome! I pinned their pictures up and then told them why I had them draw them, and explained why the author wrote this book.

Look at all those female scientists! 

We then read the story aloud and then I shared a clip of Lonnie telling about his invention in his own words (the kids were thrilled to know that he was still alive!).

This lesson worked equally well for 1st and 2nd grades - and one of my more difficult classes (end of the day on Thursday - they are often spent!), did an awesome job with it. Definitely one I am going to repeat next year!

4th Grade Collaboration

We all talk about collaboration - and it's one of the things that drove me to this career change in the first place - but in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of an elementary school, it can be tough to actually carve out the time to, well, collaborate. 

I'm lucky that the 4th grade classrooms are right across the hall from me, and that a number of research projects dovetail into library skills = a great candidate for collaboration. 

I had a really great example last week - in Social Studies, students are in the middle of their immigration unit, where they had to interview someone who immigrated to the United States and then do research on their country of origin. Helping with the research was a natural fit but I was able to go a step further with my 4th grade colleague's input. 

Their final project required them to tell their interviewee's story, including their feelings during different points of their immigration journey, but the classroom teacher felt her classes could use some practice identifying the beginning/middle/end of their stories. Enter a perfect opportunity to use some of the excellent immigration titles we have in the library. 

Immigration stories I used as part of this lesson 

My lesson was pretty simple - I read My Name is Sangoel aloud and we worked on this graphic organizer as a class (I modified it a little, where we listed major events in the story on the left side of the box, and then brainstormed how the character was feeling on the right side of the box). 

I then read The Name Jar, which had similar themes to the first story, and students worked in groups to complete a graphic organizer on their own. They were really into it, the modeling worked great, and it was a perfect preview of what they were going to be asked to do on their own at home. Win, win, win! 

Mock Caldecott (Mostly) Success

The past month was really busy with my 2nd and 3rd graders as we did a Mock Caldecott unit modeled after the one posted on the Mr Schu Reads blog.

Given timing and attention span of my students, I shortened the list to 11 - I just didn't think I could devote more than 3 library classes to this without them totally losing steam - and timed it so that we finished our "voting" the week before the official announcement was made.

To begin, each student received their own "My Mock Caldecott Ballot" which contained the cover art of each book we were reading and a 4 question rating guide. This was time-consuming with the double-sided printing, collating, and stapling, but with advance planning, it was totally doable.

I kicked off the unit with a very brief history of the Award and then spent more time on the 4 criteria real Caldecott judges use to decide if a book should win the award. I simplified the questions from the ballot on an anchor chart at the front of the room, as well.

Ballot and sample rating - love the color commentary!

From there, we went through 3-4 books per class and students rated as we went. I realized on class 3, that it was going to be a lot of tallying for me, so I had them add them up at the end. Next time, I will remember to include that in the instructions from the get-go.

On to the results...

Caldecott Time

Lessons for the next few weeks will center on the upcoming Caldecott Awards, with a slightly different twist for each grade level. 

To start, I built a new display with all Caldecott Winners and Honor books - we have a lot of them! It's pretty cool to see all the different authors and illustrators who have won over the years, although, I think the competition is much tougher in modern times. I love seeing how books on display fly off the shelves - it gives me motivation to keep coming up with new ideas to showcase different types of books. 

Preview of the books we are reading this week: 

Calling All Artists!

In addition to our regular library lessons last week, I also introduced the MSLA's (MA School Library Association) annual bookmark contest.

The MSLA made it really easy - I showed this quick video made by students at Dartmouth Middle School and shared a short slide deck I prepared with the high-level details of the contest.

There was SO much enthusiasm across all grades - I can't wait to see all the entries that come in.

If any kiddos need more information, the contest website is here. The entry form and past winners can all be found on this site.

All entries do need to be signed by a parent or guardian and returned to me by Monday, February 12. 

MLK for all ages

This week's library lessons for the most part focused on honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I used a different book for each grade as a jumping off point and did a variety of different activities for each.

Kindergarteners were the one outlier. Two K teachers came in to check out books about MLK, so I decided to switch up my focus this week. I'm starting Caldecotts with most grades next week so I started a week early with K and read a wordless Caldecott winner, A Ball for Daisy. This is a really cute book, and they did a great job helping tell the story.

1st grade heard My Brother Martin, written by his sister and shares stories and memories that not everyone knows about him. To introduce this idea, I shared a little memory box of some things that only my close family and friends would know which I think worked to get them to know me a little better.

In 2nd grade, we read Martin's Big Words. Before reading the book, I introduced the KWL chart and we filled out what we knew about MLK and what we wanted to know (cutest 2nd grade question: Who were his friends?). This book is unique in that it features snippets of some of his speeches, so I had students take turns reading the quotes that were sprinkled throughout the text. Following the book, we finished our chart by logging anything new that we learned about MLK.

3rd grade read A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. While pretty basic, it is a good book to use to work on sequencing. So, we read it through first and then each student received a page of the book and we created a human timeline of MLK"s life. All in all, it worked pretty well and was a nice way to mix up some of the activities we've been in 3rd grade over the past several weeks.

4th grade will be working on their US State research projects soon, so I have been looking for ways to preview some of the research tools they'll have available to them. This week, I created a few stations for students to travel to, giving them a chance to practice their Destiny and Britannica skills.

5th grade continued to make progress on their Passion Projects. I think some students will be ready to present in a few weeks - exciting stuff!