To begin our school year in the library and to celebrate the joy of reading, every class experienced the poetry of Kwame Alexander from his picture book poem:
How to Read a Book
Next, dozens of great book recommendations were given to all grade levels through the presentations of The 2020 Illinois Readers Choice Award Nominees:
3-5
Students in grades 3-5 have been introduced to 20 nominees for the Bluestem Award. With a variety of fiction and non-fiction, picture books and novels, there is a genre for everyone. Below is a list of the 20 nominees for the Illinois Bluestem Award:
2020 Bluestem Award
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4-5
Students in grades 4-8 are invited to participate in the Rebecca Caudill Award process. There are 20 books nominated for this Illinois State award, 15 of which were presented to our 4th and 5th graders. In the Spring, eligible students will join other 4th-8th grade students in Illinois and be able to vote for their favorite 2020 Rebecca Caudill title:
2020 Rebecca Caudill Award
Grolier - Students worked in groups in an open exploration of five features of the Grolier Online Encyclopedia: search window, videos, atlas, dictionary, and images. Groups discovered the information that each feature offers and presented their findings to the class.
Google Searches - Everyone has searched for information using Google. But how can you get the most focused search results? We discussed using specific, streamlined search terms to get concise, narrow result lists. Examples of word choice, word order, and brief search terms were shown to demonstrate how results can vary depending on the search terms used.
House Project - Giles Laroche wrote and illustrated a beautiful book that shows examples of house styles around the world - If You Lived Here: Houses of the World. Fifth graders are working in pairs on a three part research project, each focusing on a different house in the book. First, they will evaluate how the style of the house connects to its environment. Second, they will research five cultural aspects of the country where the house was first built (using Grolier and Google searches.) Third, students will create a Google Drawing showing a picture of the house with links to documents that share their research.
eLearning - D96 Elementary eLibrary Website