CCPS students and their families can access teachingbooks.net online on the CCPS web page. The link is http://www.culpeperschools.org/index.php or you can google "Culpeper County Public Schools."
On this page is a box to the right. Contact me, the librarian, at ctapp@culpeperschools.org for the user name and password.
Anyone with a culpeper schools email address will not need passwords.
Teachingbooks.net is a database that enhances reading. You can search for titles or authors or subjects and get all sorts of resources - everything from the author pronouncing their name (audiofiles) to videos of author interviews and author's reading excerpts of their books. This database also has links to the author's sites, author's blogs, lesson plans, reader's theatre scripts, and many other ideas and activities to go along with just about any title you are reading.
The 6 day week after the big break! I was sick and out for two days early on in this cycle. I found Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen online being read by an actor, Robert Guillaume.
For the lower grades, we started off by discussing the cover of the book and trying to decide what the animal was that the ducks were lifting. One of the most prominent answers was "a horse". We talked about why the ducks might be lifiting the crocodile up in this way and some of the answers were priceless. One of my favorites was, "Because he is too fat to walk."
After discussing picking up someone in celebration or because they did something heroic, we watched the story being read. This story turned out to be a major hit with the lower grades. I think some of it might have been just because it is fun to say "Guji Guji". Afterwards, we talked about how stories had a beginning, a middle and the end and we talked about what those were in this story and then the students were asked if they remembered some of the ducklings name and what they looked like. I made a "Guji Guji" coloring page to keep them occupied while we checked out books at the end of the class.
The 4th and 5th grades were re-introduced to our "library game" based on video game rules. The outcome of "Library Wars" or "Catalg Carnage" will be the students ability to understand how to find a call number on the OPAC (catalog) and then locate the book on the shelf. I have written a series of worksheets and activities that either work on putting spine labels or call numbers into "shelf order" and recognizing what section the book would appear in. The second half of this "level one" in the game is learning to use the catalog. We have just started with the basics - what is the call number, how to do "wild card" searches, how to tell if the book is checked out or available...
Every video game has some sort of award system, so I showed the students the erasers and pencil sets I purchased for this very purpose. As they pass each section of this level, they get to choose a prize. The final level, of course, is the "boss level". Guess who's the boss? They have to prove to me that they can use the catalog and locate books on the shelf. They seem to be excited about the concept anyway. I hope it works.
Five of the six days in "week 13" came before the holiday break from December 24, 2012, through January 2, 2013. One library event that the librarian, Annette Nicolay, had done was to play "BINGO" using Smarties as the board tokens. I had many, many requests for this, so we spent the days surrounding the holiday break doing exactly that - listening to Clement C. Moore's Night Before Christmas and playing Christmas BINGO with Smarties.
It was a very popular week.
There was a day 6 the day we returned, January 3rd, and the classes (grades 3-5) didn't mind doing Christmas BINGO at all.
Grades K-2 listened to a toy version of Santa read The Night Before Christmas and we discussed how some of the library's copies of this book only had illustrators names on the covers because the actual poem was written by Clement C. Moore. We talked about how we could use that poem and do our own illustrations and publish a book, just like the many illustrators of the library's copies had.
Grades K-2 also had coloring pages of Santa "laying his finger aside of his nose" to color while the tables took turns choosing books to check out. In addition to that coloring page, the library had lots of Christmas coloring pages available and Christmas word searches.
