The Votes Are In! Mock Caldecott 2016

Memorial School had our 3rd Mock Caldecott. It's such a fun unit of study. We get to read the newest and best picture books over the course of about two months. We read the stories and examine the illustrations REALLY closely. For our Kindergarten and Grade 1 students, we are looking to see if the illustrations help to tell the story and if they are really special.

"The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children."

(from the Association of Library Service for Children website)

This past year there were so many exceptional picture books, that I increased the number of books the children considered from three to five. Even narrowing down the field to five was a challenge, so this year I invited the Memorial staff to help me choose which books to include. Here are the five finalists for our Mock Caldecott: 

 

Students voted when they had library class. We used a google form for our ballot:

And, the winner was...... (by a LANDSLIDE!!)

Notice the student created Mock Caldecott Medal!

I tweeted out the results of our Mock Caldecott. Can't wait to share this with our kiddos. Take a look:

For the first time ever we had a tie for our Mock Caldecott Honor Book! The silver medal goes to Waiting by Kevin Henkes (which was awarded the real Caldecott Honor Medal this year) and If You Plant a Seed by Kadir Nelson.

Congratulations to our winners. It's so much fun to have all my classes reading and talking about the same books during this unit. We look forward to reading the picture books published during 2016 to be considered for our 2017 (!) Mock Caldecott.

Nice job Memorial students!

Hour of Code... Memorial Style

What is the Hour of Code?

"It's a one hour introduction to computer science designed to demystify 'code' and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and innovator."

Memorial School participated in our 2nd Hour of Code December 8 - 17. Throughout these two weeks, each of our eight first grade classes came to the library to experience their 1st Hour of Code. We explained that we were joining millions and millions of other kids and grown-ups in more than 180 countries around the world to see what coding was all about and to try it for ourselves.

We used the fabulous free app ScratchJr. Students were given a brief lesson on what coding is and how to use the app and then they were off! Such excitement! Such engagement for each and every student! Such fun!

Enjoy this brief video of our HOC 

Hour of Code, Memorial Style! from Randie Groden on Vimeo.

There's a lot of thank you's to go around - I never could have made this such a success without help and support from many Medfield friends:

• Thank you to Dr. Missy Bilsborough, our principal, for supporting this program. 
• Thank you to our Technology Assistant, Bruce Glaser for rounding up all the iPads we needed - one for each student!
• Thank you to our Library Assistant, Dorothy Redding for her enthusiastic support and participation. 
• Thank you to Debby Froman, K-5 Technology Expert for helping out one afternoon. 
• Thank you, once again, to the fabulous team from Blake who spent an entire afternoon helping us out: Nat Vaughn, principal, Diane Horvath, Technology Integration Specialist, Michael Gow (even though he could not join us that afternoon, we appreciate that he organized the Blake Community Service Club members who joined us) and Brenda Perachi who filled in for Michael. And to the seven amazing students who were so great in helping our young students: Sarah B., Taylor G., Grace L., Charlotte R., Grace F., Caroline C., and Katie S. 
• Thank you to Neal Sonnenberg, Medfield High School Tech Integration Specialist for bringing three very awesome students Anna W., Alex H., and Mark B. from the Help Desk for one whole afternoon.
• Lastly, thank you to all the grade 1 teachers for helping to make our HOC happen.

We're hoping our students will have opportunities to do more coding throughout the year. Many kids have told us they've been using ScratchJr at home since our HOC and have been teaching their families how to code. How awesome is that! Cannot wait for year 3!!!

PS  Found this great sketchnote by Sylvia Duckworth. List by Brian Aspinall:

Let the Mock Caldecott Begin!!

The 2015 Caldecott Winner

So excited to be starting our 3rd Mock Caldecott with all of our Kindergarten and Grade 1 classes. To begin, we read and looked very closely at last year's real Caldecott award winner, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat. It's amazing how much we noticed in the illustrations (honestly, I saw new details with each reading and with the help of our young students who noticed things I had missed). We talked about how the illustrations help to tell the story in a picture book where there are not that many words. One first grader said, "Words and illustrations are best friends in a picture book." BOOM! She nailed it. This is the best description of how words and illustrations work together in a picture book I've ever heard wink emoticon

Here are the potential contenders for our Mock Caldecott (in no particular order):

    

Something new this year: I've invited our staff to help narrow down the field (usually our young students choose from four titles). I thought, why should I have all the fun choosing? But really, it's just too hard with so many outstanding choices. I admit it, I need help! So thank you in advance, Memorial staff!

More to come as we get deeper into our Mock Caldecott unit.

Amazing Three Days of Learning, Sharing and Connecting at #AASL15

I was so lucky to attend the American Association of School Librarians National Conference in Columbus, Ohio last week. It was truly an outstanding conference. More than 3000 school librarians from across the US came to learn, share, and to meet each other and some of our very favorite authors and illustrators. My head is still spinning from all that I took in and experienced. If you have not attended a national conference, I highly recommend that you do!

There were so many wonderful and interesting sessions, there was an Idea Lab where librarians shared ideas, programs, technology and how they're being used in their schools - it was inspiring and practical. There was an Unconference one night that went till midnight (our learning and sharing truly never stopped!). One highlight was a speed dating event where participants traveled from table to table to meet incredible authors and illustrators and were even given books to have autographed. We had a Makerspace where there was lots of tinkering - I made something with a 3D pen, a badge that lights up and experimented with different robots. So fun.There was also time for important conversations during meals, while walking from one event to another and late night gatherings.

Some of my library heroes were there and I had a chance to say hello and express my appreciation for all they do. I met Barbara Stripling, who is a dean at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. She created the Stripling Model of Inquiry which we have been using at Memorial School. That was a thrill.

Another thrill was spending meaningful time with other school librarians from Massachusetts. One of the co-chairs of the conference was Kathy Lowe who is the Executive Director of MSLA (Massachusetts School Library Association).We have an impressive group of leaders from our state.

I recorded my learning and thoughts several ways: photos, twitter, Evernote and something new for me, sketchnoting (I'm not too proud of my results, but it was fun anyway...). I want to thank my friend and fellow librarian, Laura D'Elia, for the idea to Storify my tweets from the conference. First time using Storify too. Here it goes:

Our Storybook Pumpkin Patch is Back and It's the Best One Yet!

October is a favorite time in our library now that we look forward to our annual Storybook Pumpkin Patch! Students are invited to decorate a pumpkin to look like a character from a favorite story. 

The pumpkins this year were FABULOUS! Come take a peek:

Memorial School's Story Book Pumpkin Patch from Randie Groden on Vimeo.

A huge thank you to all of our students and their families for participating this year. We love that our Storybook Pumpkin Patch keeps growing bigger every year!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Reading!

We are so excited!

This week is a very exciting week in the world of children's literature - it's the beginning of The Global Read Aloud (GRA)! This will be our 3rd time participating. What is so awesome about the GRA is that teachers around the world read the same book aloud to their students during a particular week. It is a free project and it fits perfectly into the standards we have to cover. It is a way to be connected to the larger world outside of the walls of Memorial School! How cool is that?

The GRA provides an opportunity for our young students to take a deeper look into a particular author. During the project, our K-1 students will be reading books by Amy Krause Rosenthal. I may try to make some connections with schools outside of Medfield depending on how our technology is working. At the very least we will be sharing our students ideas and thoughts via twitter. The official hashtag is #GRA15 and the specific hashtag for the 
Amy Krouse Rosenthal Picture Book study #GRAAmy  
You are invited to follow our experiences here: @MemLibrary

At this time more than 200,000 students from more than 60 countries are already signed up to participate. This project will allow for students to use technology tools in a meaningful way, while listening to a fantastic read alouds. FYI: Older students read a particular chapter book and then read the same chapter each week.

Here are the books I will be sharing with our students during library classes for the next few weeks:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

 Week 6 is Teacher Choice of any book by Amy Krause Rosenthal (here are a few to choose from but there are many more!):

             

If you would like more information about the Global Read Aloud, feel free to visit the website www.theglobalreadaloud.com or I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Happy, Happy Reading!

We went a little Dotty...!

September 15th-ish is one of my favorite dates of the year. It's the day/week we join more than four million people all around the world to celebrate International Dot Day, which is inspired by Peter Reynolds' book, The Dot.

From http://www.thedotclub.org/ :

International Dot Day, a global celebration of creativity, courage and collaboration... The Dot is the story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and sharing, which has gone on to inspire countless children and adults around the globe.

This is the third year Memorial School has participated in Dot Day. Art teacher, Joe Knaus and I have collaborated each of these years and we're proud to say that every student and staff member reads or hears the story and then creates their own dot. It's a One Book, One School event! Kindergarten and grade one students create dots in art class (and a big thank you to brand new art teacher, Tracey Babin, for jumping in!). And, our PreK students make dots in their classrooms. It's so much fun and so inspiring to see all the dots displayed around the school.

But that's not all! This year we added Go Dotty Day  when everyone wore dots. What a fine and fun example of school spirt.       

                             

                      

                                                   

 

Staff member Kathleen Flaherty gave dot stickers to anyone who did not wear dots

One component of Dot Day is connecting with others outside of our school walls. We had seven Skype sessions planned, but due to technical problems we were only able to make four of them. Still, four very successful Skype sessions! We connected with students from Austin, TX, Baton Rouge, LA, Carlisle, MA and Dacula, GA. We co-read stories, had one mystery Skype where students gave each other clues so they could guess where the other class was from, and each time we asked questions to learn what was the same and what was different about our schools and where we lived. I was so proud of our students. They showed they were excellent digital citizens by their respectful behavior.

That's us on the screen! We're co-reading Ish by Peter Reynolds (the sequel to The Dot)

For those classes whose Skype sessions did not work out (YAY for plan B!), we made dots come alive using Augmented Reality (AR). This was LOTS of fun!

                 

  

We were all about Dot Day in the library too. Kids listened to related stories, learned the Dot Song (you can see a live version here) and there were a couple of special centers. Here's one where dots were made: circles were traced, decorated and then cut out.

Lots of thanks to go around: To our principal, Dr. Bilsborough and the staff for their support, to all the students and their families for their partipation and enthusiasm, to fellow teacher librarians for their collaboration and to my partner, Joe Knaus. 

Can't wait to see how we "Make our Marks" throughout this school year until next September 15th-ish, 2016!