April Highlights

Spotlight on: Animated Movies!




In fifth grade, students just loved creating their movies about body systems for our Survivor M.D. research project! After weeks of research, our 'doctors' were given the task of teaching the rest of the class about a body system. To see more of our movies, check out our Survivor M.D. wiki. Next challenge: researching diseases and diagnosing a patient!

Meanwhile, fourth graders in Mr. Dugger's research class are creating "My HistorySpace," a ning where "explorers" can connect with other "explorers" on any topic and provides a variety of communication, connection, collaboration and information tools such as forums, blogs, videos, photos. Each student has made a talking avatar to introduce their explorer, as seen below.

Kindergarten-Grade 3 Round-Up:
Kindergarten classes have been enjoying the stories of Beatrix Potter. We have been utilizing a great website to supplement this unit as well as an online version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

To reinforce the difference between fiction and nonfiction, First Graders are in the midst of a unit on hippos! We have read George and Martha, gathered hippo facts from video clips on Discovery Education. This unit will end with the book, Owen and Mzee, the true story of a baby hippo and an 130 year-old giant tortoise who become best friends after a tsunami strands the baby hippo. We also received a letter from Robert Munsch! Last month, for our Great Tooth Tally project, we sent drawings to the author. Not only did he write us back, but also sent us a story in which he featured us as the characters!!

Second Graders are cooking up the ingredients in a fairy tale! After learning about the elements in a fairy tale, we read Cinderella and compared the original Grimm Brothers' version to the more well-known version. We will continue to study classic fairy tales through the month of May.

We are also ready to announce the winner of the Searingcott Medal. This year we decided to honor illustrators that never won a Caldecott. The gold medal goes to: ERIC CARLE! The book we chose to honor with a medal designed by 2nd grader, Grace, is MISTER SEAHORSE. We also gave honor awards to: PATRICIA POLACCO AND JAN BRETT, for the books ROTTEN RICHIE AND THE ULTIMATE DARE and HEDGIE BLASTS OFF, respectively. Thanks to Sara and Tiffany for designing the silver medals for us.




In third grade, we approach the end of our reference book study with a unit on almanacs. Students are learning how to locate information in the almanac. This unit will culminate with the third grade World Almania tournament.




More News from the Library:
I am happy to announce that our fifth grade research project on the 2008 presidential election, Meet the Candidates, has been honored with two prestigious awards:
Out of hundreds of applications from across the country, our project was named one of 47 finalists for the Cable Leader's in Learning Awards in the category of media literacy. Although we did not win the award, it was an honor to be named a finalist amongst a very qualified group of educators from all aspects of education.

The project won the 2009 ISTE SIG MEDIA SPECIALIST TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AWARD! This annual award sponsored by Linworth Publishing, Inc. and Follett Software Company will be presented to Mrs. Kliegman and collaborating teacher, Mrs. Forte, for conducting an exemplary technology program extending beyond the library to meet the needs of classroom students and teachers. The purpose of this award is to identify, promote, and sustain excellence in collaborative and innovative technology-based projects driven by the school library media center in support of curricular and instructional needs in elementary, middle, and high schools. The award will be presented to three teams of a school librarian and a collaborating teacher—one elementary, one middle, and one high school, or its equivalent—at ISTE’s annual NECC conference. Additionally, the library will receive $2,000 worth of children's books and professional books.

March Happenings

As always, the library is a busy place! This month brought us Kathleen Bart, our visiting author/illustrator, and how lucky we were to have her! Kathleen, a former designer for Ralph Lauren, really engaged our students with her presentations and was nice enough to draw me as a city girl teddybear on the red carpet! Students and staff alike thoroughly enjoyed her three day visit at Searingtown.

We also got in some new books, including a new set of president books...with three new books about President Barack Obama! Look for new state books and the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.

Our Searingcott contest has ended and the winner of the award will be announced very soon. We will also announce the student winners for the medal design contest.

Vote for the Searingcott Medal!!

February Happenings

To those of you who are visiting here for the first time, welcome! Feel free to leave a comment on our Library Blog! Here is a recap of the exciting things happening in our library during the month of February.

Our kindergarten classes enjoyed Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day stories, while our first graders are involved in an online project created by a teacher from Australia! The Tooth Tally project is a collaborative project that includes first grade classrooms from all over the world! We are tallying up the amount of teeth lost by each of our first grade classes over the months of February, March, and April. Students drew pictures of the tooth fairy which we shared with our global friends and have been learning all about tooth care. We are enjoying wonderful books, such as Andrew's Loose Tooth (read by the author, Robert Munsch) and Open Wide, Tooth School Inside. We emailed Robert Munsch to tell him how much we enjoyed hearing him read this funny story and have created drawings to send to him...we hope he puts them on his fantastic website!

Second graders have been researching the illustrators they chose for the Searingcott Medal and designing medals to be awarded to the winner. We are awarding our medals to illustrators who have never won the prestigious Caldecott Medal! The contenders are: Eric Carle, Jan Brett, Dyanne DiSalvo, and Patricia Polacco. Winners will be voted on and announced in March.

In third grade, students continue to refine their information literacy skills. We are focusing now on learning how to use the encyclopedia.

Fourth grade research has begun again with two new classes. Mr. Dugger's class has just begun their "HistorySpace" project, where they will research explorers. More information on this amazing project will be coming soon! Ms. Alexander's class are sharpening their research skills with our Flying High WithResearch WebQuest. They will soon earn their 'research wings' and be ready to navigate a research project.

Finally, Mrs. Ruggiano's and Ms. Capello's fifth graders have joined Mr. Soloway's class on Survivor Island! Survivor M.D.: Long Island, is our latest research project. In this scenario, our students have transformed into doctors specializing in different body systems. We have cardiologists, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, gastroenternologists, rheumatologists and pulmonologists! Each week or so, our doctor tribes are given an "Immunity Challenge" where they must work together as a team to complete research tasks. Ask your children about this fun project!

We are looking forward to our author visit next month. Long Island author, Kathleen Bart, will be visiting us for three days, thanks to our wonderful PTA.

It's a New Year!

January has been very busy at the library! In kindergarten we have been learning about Martin Luther King and Chinese New Year. We have been taking advantage of the wonderful videos and learning activities available on Discovery Education and Scholastic Bookflix.

First graders have been involved in interactive Smartboard lessons that focus on winter and the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

In second grade, Mrs. DeMarco's class and Ms. Kohart's class are doing research on their heritage. We used Google Earth to fly to various countries around the world and researched interesting country facts using the World Almanac. Besides that, all second grade classes are participating in our Searingcott Project! So many wonderful illustrators have never won the Caldecott Medal...we were amazed to find out that Eric Carle, Jan Brett, Dr. Seuss, Dyanne DiSalvo and Patricia Polacco have never won this prestigious award. Our five second grade classes are each researching and evaluating one of those illustrators in their very own "Searingcott" committees. Each class will nominate one book from each illustrator to win the award. Students are creating Searingcott medals using KidPix and will design posters advertising their nominations. In a couple of weeks we will have our vote, award our medals, and try to email the illustrators to let them know!

In third grade have been learning how to use our OPAC - our electronic library catalog - by doing a series of OPAC challenges. Students are becoming experts in doing title, author, and subject searches. Students also learned about the Dewey Decimal System, the numeric system used to organize nonfiction books in the library.

In research classes, fourth graders finished their Research Webquest and are now finishing up a short research project on New York State and City historical sites. They are creating an interactive map using Google maps. The map will have the historical sites marked off with information about the landmark embedded into it.

Finally, fifth graders are starring in our very own reality show, "Survivor M.D.-Long Island"! In this simulation of the popular show, Survivor, students are stranded on an island located in the Atlantic Ocean. Classes have been divided into tribes, each tribe made up of doctors specializing in different body systems. Tribes are given different challenges to complete each week; have chances to win 'immunity' and 'reward' points; and are posting their work in our Survivor Wiki.

Also, we are pleased to announce that our author visit this year will be Kathleen Bart. Watch for information that will be coming home about how to order autographed books! Thanks, as always, to our wonderful PTA for providing this learning experience for our students!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We've been reading and learning about Thanksgiving in many different ways. We have listened to stories, such as Firefighter's Thanksgiving, Turk and Runt, Turkey Surprise and have watched videos from Discovery Education. Some first grade classes have created Thanksgiving Guest Books with the help of Mrs. Giorgi. Here is one from Mrs. Singer's class:

October Happenings

The month of October was a busy one in the library! The primary grades listened to some spooky Halloween stories, such as The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and Skeleton Hiccups and practiced sequencing skills on the smartboard. In second grade we concentrated on parts of the book and arrangement of books on the shelf using online games and quizzes. Third graders began their preliminary "flight training" as they learned to navigate the Dewey Decimal System.

In our Research Classes, Mrs. Benzoni's and Mrs. Taliercio's classes are participating in our Research WebQuest. This very important unit teaches students:

• How to find the resources they need, both in the library and online
• How to safely navigate the web
• How to recognize reliable resources on the web
• How to research using the Big6 research process
  
• How to skim and scan information
  
• How to take notes
• What plagiarism is
• How to create citations using our subscription to NoodleTools

Our two fifth grade classes (Mrs. Redito's class and Mrs. Livingston's class) completed our Meet the Candidates research project. They were amazing!! We held an election rally on October 30th, where students presented their final products, including political newscast videos and public service announcement videos. Students also created posters, buttons, and flyers. We even skyped (videoconferenced) with a fifth grade class from Delaware to debate some hot political issues. There was quite a bit of excitement when Barack Obama and John McCain showed up at our rally! After the rally, all of fifth grade went to the computer lab to vote on our online poll. Like the real vote, Barack Obama was our winner, with 65% of the votes. Because other schools participated in our project, we were also able to see how classes across the country voted on our CommunityWalk map. Students are now blogging about the experience. In all, this project made great use of technology and web 2.0 tools to bring the curriculum alive.