Presenting Armadillo Readers Choice Award at TLA

I had the best time presenting today at the 2018 Texas Library Association annual conference. Two of my favorite librarians, Emily Kupersztoch and Stephanie Inzana, and I, were thrilled to share The Armadillo Readers Choice Award with a packed room of hundreds of librarians! We hit capacity and were so excited! Check out our presentation.

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!

Armadillo Readers' Choice Award Selects Books for 16-17 List

The Armadillo Readers' Choice Award Selection Committee met today at Deep Wood Elementary to read 85 recently published picture books. Mrs. Young and I both serve on this committee for next year. It was so fun to make time to read - something we actually don't ever get time to do in our busy library. We narrowed these books by our purpose (TEKS-based lessons for K-2 students) and eventually whittled the list down to 10 amazing books.  We can't wait to share them with you and our students soon.

Thanks to the committee for a wonderful day of reading and lesson planning.  I can't wait to see what we come up with next!

Kindergarten reads Armadillo Readers Choice "Foxy"

by guest blogger Mrs. Young

Kindergarten students honed their re-telling skills and got to do a little acting during a recent library lesson.  After reading the book, Foxy by Jessica Souhami (which is one of our Armadillo Readers' Choice nominees), the students were challenged to re-tell the story to Mrs. Young and their teachers using masks and props.  They did a great job, and had a lot of fun, too!

Armadillo Readers Choice Award Results for RRISD!

Well the final votes are in across RRISD!  Forest North was highly representative of the district at large because our winners were the same as the RRISD winners!  With over 9,000 votes, children in grade Kindergarten through second have voted their favorite Armadillo Readers Choice Award title!  With over 3,500 votes, Mustache Baby is our winner.  You never know - maybe author Bridget Heos will be visiting our campus next year to celebrate (hint hint!)  The Day the Crayons Quit earned over 1,900 votes and landed in 2nd, and Carnivores got 1,300 votes, which puts it in 3rd place for the year.

Thanks so much to my lovely fellow Armadillo Readers Choice Committee members, especially our chairs, Emily Kupersztoch & Ami Uselman, for helping put together this great list last spring.  Great job, guys!  I can't wait to see how the kids love next year's list!

Our Battle of the Armadillos via Kahoot was so fun.  The top scorer across Forest North Elementary was Jesus in Ms. Johnson's class, who was the only person to break the 1,600 kahoots mark!  He only got 1 question wrong out of 20, and says that one he accidentally clicked the wrong one.  Go Jesus!  I'm expecting big things from you now for the Texas Bluebonnet Award next year!

Armadillo Readers Choice Voting Results for Forest North!

The votes are in for the 2014-2015 Armadillo Readers Choice Award at Forest North Elementary.  We had a great time at our voting iPad parties, voting electronically and playing a fun trivia game called Battle of the Armadillos. Here are the winners, so far.  Ms. Johnson's class is the last to play this week, but submitted their votes last week before the deadline.

So, without further adieu, I give you the winners at Forest North.  They have been submitted, and will be tallied with every other elementary school in RRISD to find our true winner! 

With 27 votes, our 3rd place winner was The Day the Crayons Quit!  With 28 votes (so close!), our 2nd place winner was Carnivores!  And with a whopping 54 votes, the winning Armadillo book at the campus level is Mustache Baby by Bridget Heos!  

Armadillo Readers Choice Voting & Battle of the Armadillos

Today we're getting right back into the swing of things with a couple of Armadillo Reader's Choice Award Voting Parties and Battle of the Armadillos!  Now we've had many Armadillo votes & dance parties before, and we've had lots of Battles of the Bluebonnets before, but this is our first time doing the Battle of the Armadillos!  Special thanks to Mrs. Miller over at Herrington Elementary for her amazing idea.  I'm so excited to try it with our K-2 classes.  Check out Mrs. Miller's class below getting it done.

Students will use iPads (courtesy of Ms. Bell, our lovely art teacher with a NextGen classroom) to scan this QR code and vote for their favorite book.  Then, we'll use the iPads to play a Kahoot where students answer 2 questions from each of the 10 Armadillo books, and the student with the fastest, most correct responses wins from each K-2 class.  Sounds fun, right?  Which book will win?  Only time will tell! See you on the flip side, readers!

 

Armadillo Readers' Choice Award

 Mrs. Fournier was so excited to kick off the Armadillo Readers' Choice Award at Forest North last week.  The Armadillo Readers' Choice Award is chosen by K-2 students in Round Rock ISD annually since 2005.  Ten to twelve outstanding picture books are nominated by RRISD Librarians, and a committee of Librarians (including yours truly!) designs activities to enrich the reading experience for students. Learn more about this year's nominees at the Armadillo Readers' Choice website!

I started last week with a fun one- I read Mustache Baby by Bridget Heos to all 3 of our Kindergarten classes.  We had a blast!  It's a really funny book with a great ending.  After we read it, we each looked at 4 mustaches, and voted for our favorite ones.  After we voted, we made a graph of the votes, and compared which mustache had the most votes, and which had the least, and everything in the middle.  We talked about what else we noticed with the graph, as well.  Many students noticed that the graph looked a lot like the lunch choice chart they complete daily in their classroom.  

Second graders also had fun with Mustache Baby. They were really able to understand the inferences they were making throughout the book, and became more aware of the process of activating their background knowledge and making predictions based on it. Second graders have already gone through the Armadillo process twice before- Hailey in Ms. Johnson's class was so excited to get started, she wore her special mustache dress for the occasion. I had to document the cuteness- how precious is she?

The committee worked really hard this year to include lots of fun texts for the K-2 students to get excited about, with great connections to curriculum students are already covering in their classrooms.  It's a win win.  I can't wait to share the rest of the list with Forest North, and to kick off the program with 1st and 2nd grades!

In the spring, when we finish reading all 10 books, we come into the library to vote for our favorite, and have a dance party to celebrate!  It's one of my favorite celebrations of the year. I will announce the Top 3 Forest North winners on our morning news show (KEGL Channel 16 News - the top rated News Show at Forest North!) and then will later announce the RRISD Top 3, when those are announced.  We present a special plaque to the author of the winning book. A special thanks to my co-Librarians for helping me to plan these awesome lessons for our students, and for recommending such a great list of books this year. Can't wait to see who wins this year!

Jane Goodall from "The Watcher" by Jeannette Winter, an Armadillo Readers Choice book

Hey, Kindergarten through second graders!  Remember the Armadillo Readers Choice book The Watcher by Jeanette Winter?  It was a biography of Jane Goodall- how she was interested in animals and science even as a child, and how she eventually came to work with chimps and discovered many things previously unknown to man about them!  Her dedication, patience and compassion has made a big difference to chimps around the world, and she's still making a difference. Check out this video of the real Jane Goodall at work.

Many K-2 classes are already done reading our 10 Armadillo Readers Choice books, and the library is in the midst of hosting Armadillo Voting Dance Parties!  Mrs. Fournier has already boogied down with 1st grade classes and many Kindergarten classes too.  Which book will win?  Only time will tell!  Check out all ten of our Armadillo Readers Choice books this year here.

Mrs. Fournier serving on Armadillo Committee!

I'm thrilled to announce that I have been asked to serve on the 2011-2012 Armadillo Readers Choice Award Committee. I met with my other committee members in the past few weeks to get our nominees together, and they've been announced! The nominees are:

Wink wins Armadillo Readers Choice Award!

Hello Eagles! I hope your summer is starting off swimmingly. I'm happy to report that Wink: the ninja who wanted to be noticed has officially won the Armadillo Readers Choice Award for 2010-2011! It definitely won by a landslide here at Forest North, and when all the votes were tallied around Round Rock ISD, it still beat out all the other competition.

Stay tuned to a library near you in the fall, because we're going to get a copy of the sequel- Wink, the ninja who wanted to nap! Other favorite Armadillo titles from this year are also already available for checkout, so keep your eyes peeled. If they're checked out when you come in, you can always put it on hold!

Armadillo Readers Choice Sock Hops

April 15th was a special day at Forest North! We had a celebration in the library! Kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade spent 10 weeks reading the 10 nominated books for the Armadillo Readers Choice Award. Each week, when students exhibited library expectations in the library, they earned a card. Classes that earned all 10 of their cards were invited to the Armadillo Readers Choice Sock Hops! The winning Armadillo Readers Choice Book this year was Wink- the Ninja who Wanted to be Noticed! Stay tuned to see if it wins throughout RRISD, Eagles!

The Sock Hop was a blast. Kids dressed up in 1950s outfits, slicked back their hair or put it in a ponytail, and had a blast doing the twist, the mashed potato, and the hand jive! Here are Logan and Jordan showing off their awesome outfits. Thanks for participating! I hope you had as much fun as me!