RRISD "Hip Hop Librarians" win state Book Cart Drill Team Competition

Mrs. Fournier and her librarian friends get so excited each year to compete in the Book Cart Drill Team Competition.  This year was especially great because for the first time, we won!  Check out these videos of our performances, and our article in the San Antonio Express News all about our win!  Mrs. Fournier helps write the words, and does all of the singing and rapping on all of the songs.  She has helped with engineering some years, but not in the 2014 song. She edited some of the movies below, and is working on editing a great version of the 2014 performance, as well.

Earth Day Book Swap!

PreK students are excited for their two free books!

Happy Earth Day, readers!  We celebrated this year by having an reuse, recycle marathon session of fun.  In the Library, we hosted our 5th annual Earth Day Recycled Art Contest & Book Swap, had our 2nd year of the Earth Day Karaoke room, and debuted some Earth-themed PE games as well.

We set a new record with over 800 books given to kids to take home.  Each student got to take home 2 books as a gift from the library which we accumulated through donations and Mrs. Fournier's work on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Selection Committee.  Students were also encouraged to bring books from home as well to swap out for additional texts!  Students got to refresh their home libraries, get some new books with a little higher reading level, and have fun to celebrate our planet Earth.

RRISD Battle of the Bluebonnets 3/12/15

Natalie, Abiha, Neeharika, Sebastian & Elizabeth represented us well yesterday at the RRISD Battle of the Bluebonnets, answering 36 our of 39 questions correctly!  If you see them, thank them for showing the world what it means to be a Forest North Eagle.  They're hardworking, dedicated, and used teamwork to solve many difficult questions.

Brian Mays, our emcee for the Battle, is also an anchor on KVUE.  He featured the Battle on his show this morning- check it out here! See if you can find the back of Mrs. Fournier's head in the librarian photo.

Thanks so much to all the students, parents, librarians & Brian Mays for using our strengths to make a great memory for our students.

Skyping with G. Neri

Our "photo" with author G. Neri

G. Neri, author of the Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee Ghetto Cowboy, was kind enough to Skype with a group of 4th grade boys who are currently reading the book as part of our Book Club.  They asked him lots of insightful questions despite being starstruck by the author of this wonderful book, and he was so gracious and kind to spend his time with us.

He told us that he's currently working on three upcoming projects- a picture book, a novel AND a graphic novel.  We can't wait to check those out. Mr. Neri told us about his swap from a filmmaker to an author, and why he thinks it goes a little faster that way.  He also mentioned his amazing book Hello, I'm Johnny Cash that came out a few months ago.  I ordered it a couple weeks ago and it's amazing.  We've already got a line of kids that have it on hold.  

Check out this video for a tiny snipped of our conversation.  Thanks so much, G. Neri, for talking with us.  It meant a lot to our students to have this experience, and we learned a lot about writing from one of the best in the world!

  

  

A Fine Dessert - 2nd Grade Book Club

Have you ever read a book and been absolutely captivated by it?  I was recently when I read this book - A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Sophie Blackall.  I immediately took it to 2nd grade because it reminded me of their TEKS - comparing technology from the past and present, and how it affects our lives.  We follow the history of a dessert through time as four families make it in 1710, 1810, 1910 and 2010. 

Check out these photos of the art that show some of the book.

Sophie Blackall, illustrator, had a fascinating note at the back about how she researched for A Fine Dessert, the questions she had, and steps she took to make sure the art in this book was accurate.  She also used older forms of technology to make the dessert to experience it just as her characters did in 1710.

To get the same experiences, we rented a truck of 100+ years old items from the Williamson Museum. We looked at the 1810 whisk at the top right, and the 1910 mechanical whisk at the bottom right, and compared and contrasted them.  We also noticed how some items like the colander haven't really changed much in the past hundred years. 

We have big plans in 2nd grade- next, we're going to skype with the awesome Sophie Blackall, and also will make blackberry fool using different implements to see how hard it really is to whip cream by hand.  It's going to be delicious!

Forest North Battle of the Bluebonnets 2/26

2014-2015 Battle of the Bluebonnets Contestants:

Gabriel, Elizabeth, Aiden, Natalie, 

Sebastian, Abiha, Batool, Neeharika

Congratulations to these amazing students (and also to Ms. Bell, Mrs. Stewart & Mrs. Koester) who read all 20 of this year's Texas Bluebonnet Award nominees!  What a reading feat.  Congratulations, everyone.

We did a Kahoot with 35 questions, then took a paper quiz for the last 5 questions.  After these 40 questions, (and a couple tiebreakers!) we had our team moving forward to the RRISD Battle of the Bluebonnets.  Those students are: Elizabeth, Abiha, Natalie, Sebastian & Neeharika!  Congratulations, everyone!

  

Gaston: Making Poodles with FCC

Have you read Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Christian Robinson? It's the story of a puppy named Gaston who gets lots of training from his mom to be a proper poodle.  His sisters are named Fi-Fi, Foo-Foo, Ooh-La-La, and Antoinette. What happens when they meet a group of rough and tumble puppies at the park?

In the library, we read the book, then made our own craft poodles with cotton balls and elmer's glue.  Very sophisticated, no?  Oui!