2016-2017 Armadillo Readers Choice List Revealed

Mrs. Young & I presented two of next year's books on the Armadillo Readers' Choice Award list at our librarians' meeting yesterday. We are both on the Armadillo Readers' Choice Award committee and read over 80 books to decide on 10 final nominees. Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade students are read the 10 books throughout the year when the content of the book aligns with their curriculum. We think next year's list is full of fun books with lots of great learning activities and opportunities!

4th Grade Book Club Celebration

by guest blogger Mrs. Young

The fourth grade book club met weekly this semester to discuss The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo.  We all fell in love with this book, even though there was some hesitation at first because we had a tie vote when choosing which book to read.  One student who had initially voted for the other book stood up one day, held the book above his head and cheered, "This is the best book ever!"  We marveled at DiCamillo's story telling and how all of the different characters were connected.  We analyzed dark and light imagery and realized how it applied not only to actual dark and light, but to character's personalities and even their souls!  One book club member said the book showed him the difference between good and evil.  Another said it helped him know that no matter how small you are, you can still do big things.

To celebrate our time together we ate soup, which is very important to the plot of the story, and watched scenes from the movie to compare and contrast with the book.  The movie, although good, was VERY different from the book and the group was curious about whether the author approved of the movie or not.

Fifth Grade Book Club Celebration

by guest blogger Mrs. Young

The fifth grade book club met weekly last semester to discuss Hoot by Carl Hiaasan.  We reviewed story elements and discussed how these played out in the book.  We spent a lot of time analyzing characters and making predictions because Hiaasan's writing style left us with many unanswered questions at first.  We liked how the different story lines eventually intersected and all of the characters ended up meeting each other.  This answered many of our questions and our predictions were often right!  We also discussed being led by your brain or by your heart (a quote from the mom in the book) and how that applied to the characters and to us.  And we learned interesting facts about burrowing owls!  

We celebrated our time together by decorating cupcakes like owls and watching scenes from the movie to compare and contrast with the book.

Third Grade Book Club Celebration

by guest blogger Mrs. Young

The third grade book club met (almost) weekly this semester to discuss Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater.  We had fun comparing the technology available during Mr. Popper's time with that in our own.  We even used the iPads to watch live feed from the South Pole and a penguin exhibit at Sea World!  We used context clues from the the book to research and determine what kind of penguins we thought belonged to Mr. Popper and whether they were portrayed accurately in the book.  We celebrated the end of our time together by decorating penguin shaped sugar cookies and watching scenes from the recent movie to compare with the book.  We were really excited when a character in the book said that the penguins were Gentoos, which is one of the species that we had come up with through our research!

Pumpkins Provide 5 Senses Lesson

by Guest Blogger: Mrs. Young

The kindergarten students and Mrs. Young have been experimenting in the library!  After reading The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis, we broke into groups and used our senses of sight, touch, hearing, and smell to observe small pumpkins.  Mrs. Young brought a large pumpkin to each group to use these same senses to explore the inside of a pumpkin.  Then, each group got to use their sense of taste to explore a spoonful of canned pumpkin.  Science in the library is awesome!