FEBRUARY.....READ WEEK!

In preparing the students in grades ECC - 2 for the visiting author/illustrator Frank Remkiewicz several of his works were on display this week in the media center. He is the illustrator for the Horrible Harry series, the Froggy series, and several math books including Arithmetickle, Piggy and Dad Go Fishing, Just Enough Carrots and Less Than Zero. Students also enjoyed working in teams as clever
detectives as they listened to There's Only One Harris, which he wrote and illustrated. They will have some interesting questions for him to answer when he visits our ECC- 2 graders on March 1. Students in Jr. K enjoyed listening to Let's Go Froggy and in Alpha we heard all about Froggy's First Christmas.We are all looking forward to that day for sure.

Fifth graders saw i-movie interviews with popular author Louis Sachar. Some of his books are There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, the Marvin Redpost series, Holes and Small Steps. Holes is a winner of the National Book Award, a New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of
the Year, a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a Horn Book Fanfare Honor list Book, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Sunshine State Young Reader's Award Winner and a John Newbery Medal Winner. A movie was made from the book as well. Mr. Sachar is a writer who does not discuss his book with anyone until it is finished and it takes him 1-2 years to finish a book. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Our unit on Reference books began with the third graders working with partners to list the many uses of dictionaries and thesauruses. Students discussed thumb indexes, abridged and unabridged forms of dictionaries and the etymology of words. They will be using encyclopedias, atlases and almanacs in the weeks ahead. The final goal is to know when each type of reference book is used to locate the information you need. We will also be using the computer forms of these research tools.

A BIG THANK YOU again to all of our library volunteers. I am so grateful to Jodi Gayoso for making sure every week the library schedule is posted and coverage is available for all the classes. All of you are so appreciated and your efforts are making the students happy to visit the media center.

FEBRUARY FUN IN THE MEDIA CENTER

WOW.. have been celebrating in the media center...Groundhog's Day, Chinese New Year, 100th Day of School, President's Day, and Grandparent's Day!

Besides book displays on all of these topics, in First Grade we enjoyed having a reader's theater play on the book entitled Substitute Groundhog by Pat Miller. This story is about a groundhog who interviews other animals to come out of his hole on Groundhog Day since he is too sick to perform his once-a- year job.

In Second Grade we discovered the facts about an Australian eucalyptus forest by reading Koala Country by Deborah Dennard. This is a story about a mother Koala and her joey who feed and observe the other animal inhabitants of their fragile eucalyptus forest home. Students interacting with the book by locating the many plants and animals that live in this area. Only 20% of the forests remain for the Koala bears to live and conservation measures were also discussed.

Fifth graders were introduced to the author Gordon Korman who has written more than fifty popular young adult and middle-grade novels. Some of his books include Schooled, No More Dead Dogs, the Island, Dive and Island series, On the Run series (Chasing the Falconers) and the 39 Clues. He lives with his family on Long Island and you can visit his website at www.gordonkorman.com.

K students enjoyed the story of Valentine's Day entitled Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane de Groat. This story is about Gilbert who brings a tin of homemade cookies and his original nice or nasty poems to school on Valentine's Day. The students learned several important lessons after discussing the behavior of the characters in this story.

In 3rd grade students were introduced to idioms (a group of words whose meaning cannot be understood from the meaning of the individual words; an expression, peculiar to a specific language, that cannot be translated literally ) by reading several books. Some of the books they read were There's a Frog in my Throat by Loreen Leedy and Pat Street, A Chocolate Moose for Dinner by Fred Gwynne, and Rugs Have Naps (But Never Take Them) by Charles Klasky.

Students in Jr K enjoyed the Valentine's Day story entitled How Spider Saved Valentine's Day by Robert Kraus. Once again Spider's cleverness and wit saves the day and everyone is surprised at the end of the book.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY AND A BIG THANK YOU again to all of our library volunteers. I am so grateful to Jodi Gayoso for making sure every week the library schedule is posted and coverage is available for all the classes. All of you are so appreciated and your efforts are making the students happy to visit the media center.