Creating Book Trailers with Animoto

Our 5th graders are creating book trailers with Animoto!  This is a culminating project for them, in that they're choosing their favorite book from all of elementary school to make a trailer for.  I'm excited to see what they come up with!

Here's my example:



5th graders, here are your links to use:

Step-by-Step directions (you also have a paper copy of this)
Animoto
Google Advanced Image Search (make sure you check "free to use or share")

How do you do, Mr. Dewey?

We are learning about Mr. Melvil Dewey and our 4th graders are excited to create their own Dewey Rap!

One Book One School

For the next two weeks, our whole school is reading The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda.  We are so excited about this One Book One School project!

In the first section of the book, we've met Kengah and Zorba.  Kengah, a seagull covered in sludge from an oil spill, lays an egg and extracts three promises from Zorba the cat: don't eat the egg, look after the egg until the chick is born, and teach the chick to fly.  Teach the chick to fly!  How is a cat going to teach a chick to fly?

What do you think is going to happen?  If you were Zorba the cat, how would you approach this challenge?

Battle of the Books

What a wonderful Battle of the Books we had last night!  I was so proud of all of our participants.  Many of our students started reading Maine Student Book Awards long ago in September in preparation for this event.  Their ability to recall information from the books was amazing - they answered questions that ranged from "Who is the author of The Popularity Papers?" to "In Cloud Tea Monkeys, what color is the pouch that Tashi is given every year in exchange for the cloud tea?"  


The 2012-13 Maine Student Book Award titles are out, so it's not too soon to start preparing for next year's Battle!

It's National Poetry Month!

April is National Poetry Month and we are very excited to celebrate here in the PES library.  Check out some of these great links to explore more:

• PicLits 
• Poets.org
• Giggle Poetry
• Favorite Poem Project
• Poetry Games - Word Magnets
• What Rhymes with Squirrel?
• Acrostic Poems
• Poetry Splatter

The 5th graders read and recorded Casey at the Bat in honor of both baseball's opening day and National Poetry Month:

 5th graders: how is it different to read a poem aloud from reading a poem silently on the written page?

Maine Student Book Award Ballot

4th and 5th graders: if you have read at least 3 Maine Student Book Award titles, please vote for the winner!

Celebrating the Chickadee Award

We are celebrating the Chickadee Award this week in grades K-4!  The Chickadee Award is Maine's Children's Choice picture book award, which means that kids get to vote for the winner.  I wish I got a vote too!  Kids in grades K-3 will hear two Chickadee Award nominees every day this week - one in their classroom and one in their special (art, PE, guidance, library and music).  At the end of the week, they'll vote for their favorite.  I can't wait to find out which one wins here at PES and across the whole state of Maine.

4th graders, you are lucky because you get to vote for both the Chickadee Award and the Maine Student Book Award!  Which two titles are you voting for?  Tell me why and convince me that the books you vote for should be the winners!

Fabulous Monday!

We had a wonderful Monday in the library!

This morning the 1st and 2nd graders Skyped with Steve Ettinger, author of the book Wallie Exercies.  It was very cool because we got to talk to Steve about being an author and about how to be healthy and fit!  As you can see, Steve got us up on our feet, having fun and exercising.

In the afternoon, Kevin Cashman of Apogee Adventures came to read to the 4th grade boys as part of the Real Men Read program.  Kevin read the start of Lost on a Mountain in Maine and had all of us on the edge of our seats wondering what was going to happen to young Donn Fendler.

All in all, it was a great day in the PES library!

A visit with a Newbery Honor Author Cynthia Lord

We were so, so, so thrilled to spend today with author Cynthia Lord.  The kids (and I) have been eagerly awaiting this day for months and we've been reading her books for weeks!

Cynthia is a unique and special author in both her talent and her kindness.  This fall she posted a note on the Maine Librarians' list-serv offering to visit two schools in Maine for free.  All we had to do was email her our interest (and of course I hit "reply" instantly when I read her message!) and she would choose two lucky winners.  Well, on Thanksgiving day she chose six winners... and we were one of them!  I was equal parts ecstatic and awed by her generosity (you can read more about the selection process here in this blog entry).

In preparation for her visit, our older kids read her two chapter books, Newbery Honor winner Rules and Touch Blue, while the younger kids absolutely adored Hot Rod Hamster and Happy Birthday, Hamster.  We learned about the four critical ingredients to becoming an author today: read, write, learn and dream!  It was an extraordinary experience for our students (and staff) to meet an award winning author and to be able to ask her questions.  

Our K-2 students LOVED Cynthia Lord's Hamster books.

The staff was excited about Cynthia's visit as well.

The 2nd graders designed their own hot rods in honor of Hot Rod Hamster.

The 1st and 2nd graders made cupcakes to wish Hamster a happy birthday.

The 4th and 5th graders loved hearing about how Rules and Touch Blue came to be.

Wendy Ulmer Author Visit

Yesterday we had the good fortune of welcoming Maine author Wendy Ulmer to our school. We loved hearing the back stories to her books A Isn't For Fox, Zero, Zilch, Nada and Cowboy Billy. We learned about rhythm and writing, the importance of detail and a little bit about the business of book publishing. We had so much fun meeting a real, live author!

2nd Graders tell Daisy's story

Our second graders were excited that A Ball for Daisy, a wordless book by Chris Raschka, recently won the Caldecott Medal.  Last week we did a shared writing activity and wrote words to go along with the award-winning illustrations.  Here's the story the second graders wrote!

Winners!

We are very excited here at PES to check out the new award winning books!  Students in grades K-5 explored a number of potential Caldecott winners and many were surprised to discover that Chris Raschka's A Ball for Daisy won the highest honor.  We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Newbery Medal winning Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos!

Award Winners

The award season is about to begin!  On Monday, January 23rd, the Caldecott and Newbery Medal Award winners will be announced and it is an exciting time!  This is a day I eagerly await all year; I try to predict the winners, but my success rate is pretty low.  Do you have any predictions this year?  Or a favorite book that you think should win an award?

5th graders, good luck with your Online Newbery Scavenger Hunt! 

Holiday stories

We have been enjoying some wonderful holiday stories here in the PES library this week.  Our favorites include Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, The Chanukkah Tree, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and Lighthouse Christmas. 

What is your favorite holiday story?

Birds, Birds, Birds

2nd graders, I am so impressed with your bird research and  I have learned so much about beaks, feathers and feet from you!  Miss Wells and I both thought that it would be fun to do a virtual owl pellet dissection.  So, here we go!

Click on the owl to get started.

Popham Colony

5th graders, we are about to embark upon an adventure!

You know how people go on quests in fantasy books? Well, we are going to go on a quest of our own to discover just why the Popham Colony, right here in your back yard, did not go on to have the fame and success of the Jamestown Colony. Just think, if Popham Colony had succeeded, our little town of Phippsburg would be hugely famous and people would come and visit from all over the world. For some reason, though, it didn't work out for those intrepid explorers. Why?  That is the question you will answer as you yourself become an intrepid explorer and venture forth on our Popham Webquest.  Good luck!

5th Grade Library Class

After you listen to the podcast above, your mission is to post a response, telling me:

1. Did you like Squish?  Why or why not?
2. What was it like learning about cells from a very different perspective?
3. Should we get the sequel to Squish for our library?

Thanks for taking good care of the laptops and being great students for Mrs. Webb!

Thanksgiving Reads

We have been enjoying some wonderful Thanksgiving stories in the library.   Younger readers loved Turkey Trouble by Wendy Silvano, about a turkey who realizes he is about to become the main course unless he does something drastic. 

Our 3rd-5th graders absolutely loved Melissa Sweet's new book Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade.  This is another exquisite offering by Ms. Sweet (who visited PES several years ago and is remembered fondly by the older kids and the entire staff).  Check out the Balloons Over Broadway Activity Kit for some great craft ideas and templates!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

And the winner is...

Ryan's promises to read, podcast, participate in the Battle of the Books and run five miles convinced me that he should be the first reader of the magnificent Wonderstruck.  I loved all the persuasive posts, however, and together they made it clear to me that the library needs another copy of this book! 

I was very happy to hand over Wonderstruck to an excited reader!

Wonderstruck is here!

Wonderstruck is here, Wonderstruck is here, Wonderstruck is here!  Can you tell that I am leaping out of my chair in excitement over the arrival of Brian Selznick's new book Wonderstruck?   As many of my students know, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is one of my all-time favorite books.  Author/illustrator Brian Selznick literally created a new genre with that book because he blended pictures and words in a whole new way (he won the Caldecott Award for Hugo Cabret, despite the fact that it is 533 pages long!).  With Wonderstruck, Selznick uses the same format - page upon page of exquisite black and white drawings, juxtaposed by narrative text.  The illustrations tell one story, the words another; they seem to have nothing to do with one another until the amazing end, when the pieces come together miraculously.

I love this book.  Do not be intimidated by the size (it is a very fat book)!  Despite its 638 pages, it is a fast read (partly because once you pick it up, you won't be able to put it down).  You can learn more about this extraordinary book at the Wonderstruck website.

But for now, dear readers, I have a problem.  I know that many of you will want to read this book right away.  This is a problem I like to have, but I need your help in deciding who should get to read it first.  Please post a comment convincing me that you should be our library's first Wonderstruck reader.  Convince me that you are most worthy of this honor!  I will choose someone by the end of the week.

Halloween Highlights

Halloween is a fun time in the library... so many spooky stories to share! We especially enjoyed the new book Alpha Oops: H is for Halloween by Alethea Kontis. This is the story of a Halloween pageant, as acted out by the letters of the alphabet. They get a bit mixed up, which leads to some silly and spooky mishaps. We learned two new Halloween-related words while enjoying this story: kraken and lycanthrope. Do you know what they mean? Come on down to the library to find out!

This photo provides a hint to what "kraken" means.

So many great Halloween reads!

Real Men Read

We kicked off our annual "Real Men Read" program today in the library.  For the past several years, we've invited in guest male readers once a month to share a story with our 4th grade boys.  We've met some great new friends this way and have had a blast listening to many wonderful stories.  Our first reader this year was Mr. Manuel, our new superintendent.  Mr. Manuel told the boys about some of the things he likes to read regularly  and then read aloud the story "Best of Friends" from the collection Guys Read: Funny Business.

This year, for the first time, we also had a special guest reader (our very own Mrs. Babcock!) sharing a story with the girls.  She read about Athena from the book Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls.

Thank you so much to Mr. Manuel and Mrs. Babcock for reading with us!

Looking for a Great Read?

Are you looking for a great book?  Check out some of our student recommendations:

You can find more at our Student Book Review Podcast page!

Red Pyramid Book Review

I am very excited to start a series of student book reviews!  I can't wait to hear what our kids have to say about their recent reads.

Here's an example of what is to come:

Maine Student Book Awards

We are very excited for the 2012 Battle of the Books!  Here are some highlights from the Maine Student Book Award title list:

Cloud Tea Monkeys

This week in our 4th and 5th grade library classes we read Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham.  It is one of the Maine Student Book Awards which will be part of the Battle of the Books, so now all of our potential Battle participants have read at least one book! 

Cloud Tea Monkeys is a truly beautiful book, in both its words and illustrations.  Peet and Graham tell the story of young Tashi, daughter of a tea picker who lives in the Himalayas.  When Tashi's mother becomes sick and can not work, Tashi goes to the tea plantation with the intention of picking tea herself.  The tea basket is too heavy and she is too small, however, and she takes shelter under a big tree and simply sits and cries.

Lucky for her, though, she has some unexpected friends.  The monkeys that live on the plantation make off with her basket and fill it to the brim with beautiful, emerald-green tea leaves.  Unbeknownst to Tashi, these leaves are very, very special and they change her life forever.

Cloud Tea Monkeys got rave reviews from the PES 4th and 5th graders.  If you haven't read it yet, it is a great story for all ages!