New Books Have Arrived!

We always love when our new books arrive at the FPG Library. Take a look at the new book videos below to check out some of the great new additions to the collection. You can click on the K-2 video or the 3-5 video to see books geared more towards the level of your students or child. Come on down and check some out today!! Enjoy!

Welcome Mrs. Shannon Harris to the FPG Library

"Hello FPG! My name is Shannon Harris, but you can call me Ms. Shannon or Mrs. Harris. I'm very excited to work with Miss Jessica in the library, and to get to work with all of you while Ms. Cole is at home with her baby. I have two children of my own, one girl and one boy, that are in first and third grade at McDougle. I used to be a teacher when we lived in California, but now I am finishing up school to be a librarian. Some of my favorite things include reading (of course!), running, spending time with my family and traveling whenever I can. Please come by to say "Hello" and introduce yourself. Thank you for hosting me as a guest at your school!"

A Note From Mrs. Cole......
As you know my husband and I are expecting our first child - a baby boy we are naming Jacob this December. We are so excited about this little addition to our family, but I am sad to say this also means I will be leaving FPG for a few months to spend lots of cuddle time at home with our little guy. I am, however, very excited that we were able to snag a wonderful interim library teacher who is very excited to be working with the students and staff at FPG while I am on maternity leave. I have had the opportunity to work with her some these past few weeks and introduce her to our school and many of our students and I know the library will be in wonderful hands with her and Ms. Jessica at the helm. I will keep you all updated with lots of wonderful pictures and stories of little Jacob while I'm gone. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and I will see you all again in the spring. Happy Reading!

2nd Grade Stories with Mrs. Barbie

Students in Mr. Ruiz's dual language class recently wrote and illustrated some personal narratives with Mrs. Barbie and created a digital copy in the form of a Voicethread. Enjoy these terrific tales below.

Ezra Jack Keats Collaborative Author Study!

The First Grade team and I collaborated on a recent project in which we studied the works of author Ezra Jack Keats. Students evaluated the characters of Louie and Peter - two characters that show up again and again in many of Keats books. The characters each have their own unique characteristics that bring life into each of the stories in which they are featured. After studying these characters, students created their own stories based around what it would be like if Louie or Peter visited FPG and spent the day in first grade! We turned their hard copies into a digital version using Voicethread for all to enjoy! You can click the play button on each Voicethread below to hear these wonderful stories.

MS. MATHEW'S DUAL LANGUAGE FIRST GRADE:

Fall into Research this Autumn!

The third grade team and I designed a collaborative information literacy research project around topics of the season. Students worked in pairs and practiced the six steps of research as they gathered and shared their information on a given topic. We explained to students how they will need to be information literate all their life in order to make life decisions and understand how to handle the vast amounts of information that is available to them on a daily basis. A process such as The Big6 helps students understand how best to navigate a research task. And just like you follow steps to make a successful recipe, steps to research help you be most successful with gathering the best information to support your essential question in research. Check out the pictures from this wonderful grade level project.

It's Information Literacy Awareness Month!

On October 1, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation declaring October as National Information Literacy Awareness Month. Click the link to read the official proclamation.

What is Information literacy? Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and ethically and legally use information. There is so much information available in the world today that knowing how to separate what is trustworthy from what is false and/or biased takes a lot of skill and practice.

Students in grades 3-5 have spent the first part of the year focused on what it means to be a digital citizen and the ethical components of using social media and sharing information online. They have come to understand what it means to show good netiquette, how to define cyber-bullying, and ways to resolve issues that may arise online. They have really been excited to learn they are considered digital natives whereas their teachers are considered to be digital immigrants! Our students have never known a world without Internet, television with less than 100 channels, or cameras that require film. They are growing up in a digital world and it's important we give them the skills to effectively navigate and make smart decisions along that journey. As we move into late October and early November we will begin discussing the information literacy side to being a digital citizen as we delve into some mini research projects at each grade level.

It is certainly an exciting time to be working in a library! I have the distinct advantage of getting to work with students and staff around lessons that give them the tools they need to successfully navigate their digital landscape while also sharing with them the love of books and reading. I look forward to helping our students become strong digital citizens as they make their way through school at FPG....what fun we'll have together as we learn more!

The Five Elements of Story - in Rap Form!

Okay, so check this out......when it comes to coming across things that I think will excite students and pull them into a lesson I get super excited especially when it involves digital media. Therefore, it was no surprise when I saw this video clip I became giddy with excitement about how this could be utilized in upper grades classrooms. When teaching about story elements in readers or writers workshop we could energize our students and even get them singing this song in the hallways - and it's all about literacy!! This song even uses some relevant examples that students can relate to and understand. Perhaps I'll start hearing our own FPG students humming this tune across the school. I'd be happy to collaborate with any teacher on a "Five Elements" into lesson in which we could share this and do a follow-up activity.

Kindergarteners and Library Fun!!

Each year it is always very exciting to introduce our newest FPG students to the library and all the fun you can have in a exploratory space filled with books, technology, and learning. The first two lessons of the year with Kindergartners have been fun, fun, and more fun!! As a way to introduce them to the fun in reading we chose two separate themes for these lessons. The first theme revolved around apples being that September is National Apple Month. Students listened to an interactive read aloud of 10 Apples Up on Top by Theo LeSeig and then sang a super silly song entitled "Apples and Bananas". Of course, the students giggled more than sang as they played on the words by replacing bananas with banoonoos and baneenees. We wrapped up our time in the library by placing apples up on top of our own heads by making apple hats. By the end of the lesson we were all ready for a nice big delicious bite out of an juicy apple!

Our most recent lesson revolved around Pirates as we celebrated National Talk Like A Pirate Day. And no lesson about pirates is complete without real pirate eye patches and a few "Arggghhhh's" thrown in! We had soooo much fun when we realized that pirates stopped by our FPG library, made a mess of some of the books, and left their eye patches behind for us to wear. We got to be real pirates as we shared the book, How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. Afterwards we found library treasure maps the pirates left for us and we used them to explore the different areas of our library and found a treasure waiting for us in the picture book section! We wrapped up our time together with an animated pirate song on the Smart Board.

I can tell that the next several years are going to be LOTS of fun with some wonderful learning experiences to look forward to together. I am always reminded of the power of books and how they can spark imagination and curiosity in kids when I work with the kindergartners. And while we may not really be pirates, we sure do find treasure in the books we read.

Oh Me, Oh My.....A New Year Begins!

I love the start of a new school year.....I love getting books back into the hands of kids....and I love getting to share new tools and gadgets with students. The first few weeks of this school year have been filled with welcoming students back into the library.

For our younger students we have had so MUCH fun enjoying two separate books - "Miss Brooks Loves Books and I Don't!" by Barbara Bottner and "Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth" by Diane DeGroat. The first title mentioned is a humorous story that details how a school librarian loves books to a degree that the young girl in the story simply cannot understand. In fact, when Miss Brooks gets excited about National Book Week, the young girl cannot imagine being as excited about books as her hip librarian. All the books her classmates share during book week seem too silly, too kissy, or too pink! However, in an amusing twist, the young girl finds just the book for her and goes on to share it with her whole class. This book ends when the young girl realizes that everybody can find something funny, fantastic, or appalling in their library. The students were able to make lots of wonderful connections with the story as they practiced how to "turn and talk" to their neighbor just as they do during reader's workshop. We then followed this with a reading of Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth in which students saw pictures of things dogs do in real life and things they don't do...the pictures were super silly and the students laughed at every page turn. Using both titles to get students to think about how we make connections when we read, we asked them to use this second reading to think about things students at FPG do and don't do in our library. It was quite amusing hearing feedback from the students and listening to their creative juices flow all while getting them to voice what they remember about the expectations of the library.


With the 3rd-5th grade classes, we have been busy introducing them and their classroom teachers to the new Destiny Quest online tool. While this online tool serves as the library catalog in which students can search for books, it is also a social network for kids to share and review books. The students are very excited about this new tool and they each have their own account which includes virtual book shelves, personal list functions, and the ability to check their library account online. Located on the library webpage, this tool can be used from anywhere there is internet access including at home! Users can view the top ten most popular books in the FPG library at any given time, view book lists published by the library staff, and check out the latest arrivals. Students are well on their way to adding books to their virtual shelves and submitting online book reviews that are displayed in our catalog! The follow-up lesson taking place over the next two weeks will be a collaborative lesson between the classroom teacher, the school counselor and myself in which we discuss how to utilize the "Friend" feature on this tool to share book recommendations and comment on another's post. This lesson will include a digital citizen component in which proper digital etiquette or "netiquette" will be explored.

All in all, the year has gotten off to a great start and it has been wonderful seeing and working with our FPG students and staff once again. I look forward to a great year of learning ahead!

Family Reading Program

I saw this blog posting and absolutely loved the concept. Check out an idea for how to get creative with a family summer reading program. Rather than only having the kids in your home participate in a summer reading program, turn it into something you do as a family. Click the link below to read more about this great summer idea!

http://www.brownpaper--packages.com/2011/06/summer-reading-program.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BrownPaperPackages+(brown+paper+packages)

Poem In Your Pocket Day!

2nd Grade Writing Celebration!

Kindergarten Weather Reports

Did you know FPG has their very own Kindergarten weather reporters?? To end their study of weather, kindergarten classes displayed their talents by practicing weather reports for our school. What fun they had!

Readathon Staff Basketball: Introductions

Oh, my my.....We had our ReadAThon assembly yesterday to celebrate our students reaching our school goal of 650,000 minutes read over a two week period. And because we love our students so very much we had a challenge awaiting us. In full book character garb, we played our hearts out in an intense game of basketball. I showed up as the Cat In the Hat to honor the birthday of Dr. SEuss and Read Across America. Needless to say I am quite sore today, but had a BLAST! I think this may quickly become an annual tradition associated with ReadAThon.

FPG -Faculty "Character" Basketball game

From Washington to Obama in Less Than 4 Minutes

Okay...so I am always managing to stumble upon things that I feel would be so amazingly awesome to spark a unit of study or research inquiry. As we approach President's Day let's take a look back at our nation's great leader through the years. I think this would be fabulous to use to get kids hooked and interested in learning more about U.S. Presidents. Take a look and share what you think!

ReadAThon 2011

Enjoy this video montage of this year's ReadAThon ~ what a magical experience it was! I will post a video shortly of all our wonderful guest readers. Also click here to see the link for all our great press for 2010-2011 ReadAThon.

Top 5 reasons we need our media assistants

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
In a time of tight budgets and the need to cut in various areas I encourage all to understand the crucial role of our media assistants. In this 21st century teaching and learning environment we desperately need this library support in order to best serve our school communities. Check out the top 5 reasons below......

5 reasons why_

View more presentations from Karen Kliegman.

ReadAThon 2011 - "Read With Me Under The Sea"

Wow ~ what a fantastic first week of ReadAThon! Students have been absorbed in reading as they work to reach our school wide goal and have loved, loved, loved reading in our undersea library world. What a magical experience it has been.

New Books!

The library has been a busy place this year as we work to get our new books into the hands of kids. Lots of great new reads that have been flying off the shelves. Enjoy the video below to view some of these exciting new titles.