Learning in the Library

Every year January brings the beginning of CJL students’ participation in the Chickadee Award Program.   The picture book award program is for children in kindergarten through fourth grade.  Its purpose is to help children and adults develop and share a lifelong appreciation for excellence in writing and illustration.  The students are the ones who will choose the award winner by voting for their favorite from among ten selected books published in 2014.  The 2015-2016 school year is the twelfth year of this Children’s Choice Picture Book Project!

The kindergartners have been preparing for the Chickadee Award Program.  In December they learned about the Caldecott Medal and the wonderful picture books that have earned that award for excellent illustrations.  This week the children in kindergarten and Mrs. McCall’s class learned about chickadees, Maine’s State Bird.  Their lesson began by brainstorming different kinds of birds.  Next they read the informational book It Could Still Be a Bird by Allan Fowler.  The book describes the characteristics that all birds share and identifies several different kinds of birds.  Then the students viewed an informational video about chickadees.  After selecting new books to borrow, the children colored a picture of a chickadee.  Some children chose to color the bird accurately with a black cap, bill, bib, and feet; gray wings and tail; and white cheeks and belly.  Others chose a different color pallet for their chickadees!

Mrs. Sturtevant and Miss Mallon’s second graders, Mrs. Taylor’s first graders, Mrs. Cousens’ class, and Mrs. Allaire’s third graders were introduced to their first Chickadee Award nominee this week.  The featured book was A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz.  In this autobiographical book, the author shares what it was like growing up as a stutterer.  The only time he didn’t stutter was when he talked to animals.  Alan grew up to be a wildlife conservationist who studied jaguars in the jungles of Belize.  Through his efforts, Belize created the first jaguar preserve to project the magnificent cat from extinction.  Alan became the voice for jaguars.

Our participation in the Global Read Aloud continues as we read our fifth book by author Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  This week’s featured book was The OK Book.  The story is about the character “OK” who is okay, but not great, at many different things (climbing, diving, juggling, etc.).  He enjoys trying many activities and figures, one day, he will find something he is really good at doing.  The clever illustrations by Tom Litchenheld use the letter “O” to be the head of the character and the “K” (turned sideways) to be the body.  After the story, the first and second graders turned an “OK” into themselves doing something at which they are okay.

Our participation in the Global Read Aloud continues. We began by recalling last week’s book Duck! Rabbit!  We viewed a pie graph of CJL students’ opinions of whether the animal in the book is a duck (20%) or a rabbit (80%).  Then we compared our results to a world-wide pie graph.  It showed that 32% of participating students think the animal is a duck and 68% think it is a rabbit.  It was fun to explore the world map showing the location of participating schools that accompanies the graph.

This week we read Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s book It’s Not Fair!  The students in first and second grades and those in Mrs. McCall and Mrs. Margoles’ classes generated many examples of things they feel are unfair.  As a class, each group created a funny video of an unfair event using the iPad app Chatterpix Kids.  The teacher’s photo was uploaded and a volunteer recorded the story to which the group responded, “It’s not fair!”  The app makes the person in the photo look like she is talking!