The celebrations are about to begin! During the week of March 4-8, the HKA Primary School will celebrate Literacy Week with exciting engagements that will further increase our awareness about literacy: daily DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time, read-aloud sessions, literacy activities, author visits, and of course, exciting new books! Under the theme "Running Wild With Books", we will especially focus on fiction and nonfiction titles featuring animals. Our students have been wonderful, helping me all week already getting some decorations up and sharing their excitement about the up-coming week with me. Stay tuned for all the exciting news from Literacy Week. I will be sharing daily updates through this blog with you.

How will we celebrate World Read Aloud Day?

LitWorld, the organizers of World Read Aloud Day, invite us all to "Read it Forward" for all the people around the world who cannot read and write. By participating, we spread awareness about the importance of global literacy while celebrating a special day of reading. At HKA, we plan to do this by sharing read-alouds within and beyond our classrooms and by exchanging a book with a peer. Similar to a book swap, students will bring in one of their books from home and receive another book in return. 

This is already the fourth time this day will be marked with special celebrations worldwide. While it started off with only a small group of people in 2010, already in 2012 the number of participants was in the several hundred thousands. We are exciting to be joining the growing group of participants this year!

Last week G5 students and I had much fun with a timed scavenger hunt in the library. Within ten minutes, students had to locate a number of books - without the help of the online catalog:

- a picture book by an author whose last name begins with the same letter as theirs
- a favorite chapter book
- a biography
- a folktale
- a nonfiction book about a topic of interest.

For each book they had to write down the full title and call number. (The call number is on the spine of each book, indicating its exact location on our shelves. It is made up of two parts, the first referring to the section it is in - Everybody, Fiction, Nonfiction - the second consisting of the first three letters of the author's last name.)

The idea behind this activity was to give students an opportunity to revisit the general set up of the library and the arrangement of materials within. This will help them to locate resources more efficiently. In this context, I was able to remind students that the majority of school libraries around the world is set up just as ours with fiction materials organized by author's last name, nonfiction according to the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Learning to use one library would enable them to easily find their way around other libraries too.

Since the beginning of the calendar year, we have also shared reading recommendations and worked on Destiny Quest. In addition, students have used the library to search for information sources to answer questions connected to their Exhibition topic. Next, we will look at how to create a reference list to honor our responsibilities in using information through proper resource citation. We will also begin an exciting new author inquiry - but since it will be up to students to figure out who the author is, I won't give anything away yet ;)

Over the past couple of weeks, G3 students have been trying to figure out who the man in the poster above is. I have been reading to students from one of his childhood memoirs, 26 Fairmount Avenue. As long as the identity of the person was unknown, I kept the book wrapped in paper so that students couldn't see the cover. The only clue I had given them was that the text was autobiographical. As we had done in the past, we began by writing down our questions - and also what we thought we were learning about the author form the text, for example:

Questions:
- Who is he?
- What country is he from?
- Where does he live now?
- Does he have family?
- Why did he write his life story?
- What is his job?
- Is he still alive? If yes, how old is he?
- Has he written any other books? If yes, how many?

What we think we know now:
- he was born in 1933
- he wrote about a time in 1938 when he was five years old 
- in 1938 a big hurricane devastated the area he lived in
- his parents were in the process of building a new house while currently living in a flat
- his dad's family is Italian
- his mum's family is Irish
- he had a close relationship with his family, especially his great grandmother.

We still have many of our questions to be answered and will continue with our inquiry after the break. If you would like to find out more about Tomie de Paola already now, he has a wonderful website and blog worth exploring. Just click on the image below for a direct link to the website.

One of the things G4 students enjoy very much when visiting the library is recommending books to each other. While we usually spare a little bit of time right before students begin to check out books, we are now learning how to take advantage of technology in becoming a community of readers who recommend and share books with each other. Destiny Quest is a feature of our online catalog that allows students to keep track of what they are reading (three shelves are provided: “Have Read”, “Reading Now”, “Want to Read”), to rate and review titles, as well as recommend them to friends.

Destiny Quest is a safe platform for students to learn how to use social media responsibly and appropriately, while encouraging students to network with each other for the purpose of sharing reading recommendations. Only members of our school community can access Destiny Quest once set up with an account. So far, for G4 students, however, we have further narrowed down the number of people by agreeing that only friends and teachers of their respective class will be invited as friends to their account.

Our students are aware that I have access to their accounts and will be monitoring their activities. They are also aware that using this platform is a privilege that can be suspended at any time. Without wanting to take away from the fun and excitement, we want to make sure that we take little steps first, becoming familiar with Destiny Quest and learning about our responsibilities as users before expanding our group of friends. 

Students are encouraged to use Destiny Quest also from home. In addition, I will make time regularly during library visits so that students can update their shelves and send out recommendations. I would like to encourage parents to ask their son/daughter to show them what they have learned so far about the use of Destiny Quest. Here the link to our catalog and a pathfinder on how to access and use Destiny Quest:

HKA Library Catalog

Source: http://us.macmillan.com/author/nikidaly

Grade 2 students are no newcomers to inquiry in the library and they proved this recently. When I put a large pile of books in front of them at the beginning of January, they knew right away that we were about to inquire about a new author. There was much excitement about the brand new books with beautiful illustrations. Discovering new characters and a South African setting in many of the stories intrigued students. It was pure joy seeing everyone totally immersed in these new books.

While I was happy to see students’ interest to learn about a new author, I was thrilled to realize how familiar they had already become with the inquiry process. As a class, students could explain how we begin a new inquiry: writing down what we want to find out (i.e. our questions) and making a plan on how to find the answers (i.e. our search strategies). Students suggested we begin by reading some of his books and exploring the back and dust cover of the books for more information. This turned out to be a very fruitful first step during the "Finding out" stage of the inquiry, as we discovered right away numerous answers to our questions. 

Over the next weeks, we want to explore other resources such as the World Book Encyclopedia and our online catalog. We also want to find out whether we can contact Niki Daly in any form (suggestions range from skyping, emailing, texting and phoning him) to ask him some of our questions directly. Another exciting inquiry is on its way!

At the beginning of the year, G1 students began a new author inquiry by listening to stories by Canadian author Robert Munsch. There was much laughter as we enjoyed his narration of Roar! and The Paper Bag Princess. In addition, the stories got students excited about finding out who this man with the funniest voice ever is. In no time, we had a whole list of questions:

Our first graders also had no trouble in coming up with ideas on how we could find answers to our questions, e.g.

• Look in his books.
• Explore his website.
• Ask an expert (someone who knows him well).
• Meet Robert Munsch and ask him.
• Skype him.
• Write him an email or letter.

As we go through this new inquiry, we will regularly pause to refer to the inquiry cycle on our board and reflect about where we are in the process. In this way, we not only learn more about a new author but also consciously practice our inquiry skills. Students did a good job in remembering that what we have done so far falls into the Tuning in phase: we have written down our questions, made a plan on how to find the answers and are now ready to begin searching for information to answer our questions.

While I already gave each students a slip with the URL to Robert Munsch's website, I promised that I would also share the following information through the blog: on his website (click on the image below for a direct link), Robert Munsch generously shares many of his stories as podcasts for free downloading. Listening to him telling his stories is a real treat! In addition, a short narrative on the respective page provides background information on how he got the idea for the story.

Images from http://goodbooksguide.blogspot.hk/2009/10/interview-with-emily-gravett.html  and http://behindthebooks.gatheringbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/spells.jpg

With the help of a KWL chart, we reflected on what we already knew about the author, had learned through the video and were still wondering about, thereby realizing that we still know very little about her. Using a KWL chart is a great way to practice sorting out our thinking, what we know already and what we still want to learn. It also helps us to practice formulating wonderings, while differentiating between statements and questions.

Students had wonderful ideas on how we could find out more about Emily Gravett, e.g. by reading other books, searching for information about her on the Internet, by calling her, skyping her or writing her a letter. We thought about how great it would be if she would come to visit our school to then discover through a dedication in one of the books that she had actually been to HKA already in the past! I am sure our inquiries will discover many more exciting facts about this author. There is already now a lot of interest for her books.

If you would like to learn more about Emily Gravett, have a look at this interview on the Reading Rockets website.

Our students especially enjoy the many familiar nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters that often appear in his stories. We have had fun discovering characters such as Cinderella, Jack and Jill, the wicked witch, Goldilocks and the Three Bears in Each Peach, Pear, Plum. Students surprised me with their prediction skills while reading “Previously”. In this story, Allan Ahlberg cleverly creates a new story by narrating fairytales backwards from the perspective of the main character, i.e. what did Goldilocks do prior to climbing out of the bears’ house, what was the frog prince prior to being a frog. They quickly caught on the pattern and had so much fun telling me what would happen next.

In addition, PK2 students continue to enjoy stories in Mandarin at the end of library visits, shared by their Mandarin teacher.

Especially excited I am about seeing that PK2 students do not have to be reminded any more about making time to look through their book before checking it out. Students will pick a book from our shelf of pre-selected materials, browse through it while standing in front of the shelf or taking it back to the carpet to look through it with a friend. When asked, students can explain why they make time for this (e.g. “I want to see whether I like it”, “I want to see if it’s boring or not”) or why they have chosen a particular book (e.g. “I like dogs”, “I know this story and it is very funny”). This is an important practice, not only to make sure that students enjoy the books they take home but also to encourage them to make conscious choices and eventually think critically about books and other information sources.

Since the beginning of the year, PK1 students have had much fun listening to the adventures of Harry MacLary, created by New Zealand’s Lynley Dodd. She has been described as an author/illustrator who “is not only a gifted artist but she also has a love of language and a flair for writing... her books are of classic standard and will continue to excite young listeners and readers as well as their parents” (Tom Fitzgibbon http://www.storylines.org.nz/Profiles/Profiles+D-H/Lynley+Dodd.html ). 

It has now become a routine, that students spend time looking through a book before checking it out with me. It is wonderful how students have embraced this practice, which encourages them to think critically about books they choose: is this something that interests me? Do I really want to take this book home? Great job, PK1 students!