Caldecott Voting - 2004 Style

2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the Caldecott Medal. This annual award from American Library Association, goes to "the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children." Mrs. Haggerty, the art teacher, will be covering the artistic aspect of past award-winners with second-grade students. She asked if I would like to complement her lessons with the books themselves, which I thought was a great idea. Mrs. Steward, another Cranston school librarian, gave me some ideas on how to proceed.

After reviewing the list of past winners and honorees, I decided to start with the 2004 batch ... the year some of the second-graders were born. Here are the four books we read ... I covered up the medals on the covers so the kids wouldn't know which won what.

There was a CLEAR winner among Stadium and Garden City students. Here is the data, presented three ways. Which way do you think is the easiest to read?

Bar Chart

Data Table

Pie Chart

 

The actual winner of the ALA medal was my favorite: The Man Who Walked Between The Towers by Mordecai Gerstein, which is based on a true story. Here is the trailer for the recent documentary about the events, called "Man on Wire":

Most Borrowed Books - November

Source: wimpykid.com

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney
• Dork Diaries : Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl [2] by Rachel Russell
• Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
• The Alphabet Theatre Proudly Presents The Z was Zapped : a play in twenty-six acts by Chris Van Allsburg (still on list)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid : The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney
• I Spy Extreme Challenger: A Book of Picture Riddles by Jean Marzollo
• I Spy Fantasy: A Book of Picture Riddles by Jean Marzollo
• The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
• My Life as a Stuntboy by Janet Tahjian
• Sidekicks by Dan Santat
• The Thone of Fire by Rick Riordan (still on list)

Picture Book Month

I've been a bit behind with the blogging, so I'm a little late telling you that November was Picture Book Month.

However, I did manage to put together a display window at school, including a way for students to participate: they could fill out a slip of paper with their name and their favorite picture book and return it to me. Then I added their info - and a copy of the book - to the window.

Favorite titles included:

• The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

What is your favorite picture book? Add it to the comments below.

Grade 3 FICtion

Third graders now get to take out books from anywhere in the library ... but they're not sure how to find what they want. So we'll be learning how to use the online catalog and convert call number listings into shelf locations.

We started simple, with the fiction section. Every fiction call number has "FIC" as the first line, and then the first three letters of the author's last name as the second line.

For example, if I wrote a book, the call number would be

FIC
MOO

What would YOUR call number be?

Students figured out the call numbers for a list of books and and then created their very own for a fiction book they "wrote."

Here are some of their book covers:

Grade 6 Advertising Agency

After reading Balloons Over Broadway, Grade 6 students took a look at balloons then and now. They realized that today's Macy's Parade balloons are used as giant advertisements.

We then learned about three advertising tactics to be aware of: exaggeration, generalization, and scare tactics.

The students created their own ads using at least one of these tactics. Here are some of them: