Hope Your Have a Great Summer

I hope you are having a great summer. I look forward to seeing you soon back at school. Adventures with Books will be down for the next few weeks as we take on a new look for a new year. See you soon at school and at the new Adventures With Books website. Until then happy reading!

Reader's Oath

Reader's Oath

I promise to read

Each day and each night.

I know it's the key

To growing up right.

I'll read to myself,

I'll read to a crowd.

It makes no difference

If silent or loud.

I'll read at my desk,

At home and at school,.

On my bean bag or bed,

By the fire or pool.

Each book that I read

Puts smarts in my head,

'Cause brains grow more thoughts

The more they are fed.

So I take this oath

To make reading my way

Of feeding my brain

What it need every day.

Debra Angsted Missouri NEA

Summer Fun

Now that summer is here you may need a few things to fill those wonderful summer days. May I suggest the following:

Sign-up Beginning June 5th at the Salem Public Library for "Get a Clue @ Salem Public Library 2007 Summer Reading Club".You can win Raffle Tickets for reading from their list. There are also Summer Performances. Register at the Salem Public Library and pick up the information. Click on the Salem Public Library Link for more information.

Stay up on all you have learned this past year as well as move forward in new areas of academic growth though my Portaportal website where you will find tons of activities in math, geography, mapping skills as well as check-out a new author by catching an author interview. The guest password at this time is Wanek_diana.

Enjoy these great summer days and read a good book or two and we can compare notes come fall when we met again at Harritt.

The Total Is In!

We had 432 Stars on the Star Wall this year in library media. That is a great number of kids who were caught going above and beyond to make our classroom and class time WONDERFUL.

Thanks to all my 2006-2007 students.

The Last Of The Star Students

This is the last of the star students for this year. It has been fun to watch the star wall grow from only a few stars to many stars. Stay tune for a total count of star students in library media for the year 2006-2007!

A-3 Bradon

A-4 Jonah, Jonathan

A-6 Gaige

C-2-Corinne

C-4 Katie

M-1 Blake

Our Last Full Week Of Library Media

This week in Library Media we have had a lot of reason to celebrate. We are celebrating that the books are continuing to come in! Once again we are seeing that students are being responsible and respectful at Harritt. This is the best year we have had in students getting their books returned and those who have had a lost book being paid for in a quick manner.

Many classes celebrated the fact that they did get all their books turned in on time with a free class period in the Computer Lab… that was our goal. Once each class got their Library books turned in they were rewarded with free computer time. We had all but 4 books come in so far, and maybe they will come back by the last day of school. Last week we had 78 books out for a total of about 780.00 worth of books lost! What a wonderful leap to get those books turned in for that reward of free computer time.

The other activity of this week has been viewing the Scholastic Book Fair video to give us an idea of some titles or authors to see at our June 8th Book Fair. This is always a great activity for getting students excited about books. I so value these Book Fair tapes and have saved them to show at other occasions to introduce students to authors and book titles even when we are not having a Book Fair.

A Camping We Will Go...

This is the best week ever in Library Media. This week with each class I got to do some of my favorite units. With grades 2-5th we participated in Readers Theater. We talked about whom a play write is and what a script looks like. In doing these Readers Theaters scripts we compared them to drama scripts and what acting is like. We noted the similarities and differences between Readers Theater and acting in a play or drama.

With DLC, Kinder and 1st graders we did our annual camping trip. I hope you heard from your child about our camping experience. This is one of my most favorite activities to do all year with the students. It is truly one they will remember for many years to come! My upper grade students will attest to this as they see the tent in the Library and say that they remember when I did this activity with them, and ohh can they please do it again!

We began by reading the book Bailey Goes Camping by Kevin Henkes in their classroom. I came with my camping backpack as I read this delightful story to the children. I then told them I really wanted to go camping. Who wants to go with I ask? Of course I got all hands! This year though I had one little boy tell me he needed to check with his mom first! We then headed down the trail (hall) watching for signs of wild life (teachers, parents and fellow students in the upper grades) We passed a folks on the trail and often times heard water falls shortly after a bend in the tail (it’s really the bathroom the kids tell me) we passed a field of flowers where we spotted other human tracks (art on the wall) We found our camp spot in the Library complete with a campfire and tent. Once in our tent (yes, all at once. we did fit and had up to almost 30 kids in the tent at once!) and having removed the skunk the children were read the story P.J. Funny Bunny Goes Camping by Marilyn Sadler. We then went on a bear hunt in which we cut through a field of tall grass, crossed a muddy swamp, climbed a tall tree, swam a wide river and jumped a deep, deep ravine. This was followed by a brief lesson on fire safety as we then moved to our Library campfire for roasting marshmallows. It was such fun. I hope your students told you about this activity.

Don't Miss Out On Recess

All library books were due Tuesday May 29th. This last week students were reminded and overdue notices were set home on Friday (neon colored paper). Students who still have over-due books next week will be coming to the library during recess time to make phone calls home and write letters of reminder to get those books in.

Remember the soon your class gets their library books in the soon you win that 30 minutes of free computer time. We had one class get their computer time last week and have 4 more classes set to get their computer time first thing next week. I hope to see all classes receive this reward before the school year is over but time is running out!