We have had a great start to the year with our PK students, especially since our new students are  able to benefit from the expertise of our returning students, who seem to enjoy modeling and helping out. No matter what we do - listening to a read-aloud, sharing our ideas about the story, or choosing books, we can count on some of our returning students to demonstrate how it is done or help out by for example guiding a younger student to the circulation desk for check out.

Since the start of the year, we have already looked at how we choose and check out books, our young readers doing a wonderful job in exploring what our library has to offer and confidently asking for help in finding books on specific topics they are interested in. They take time looking through the books - often also with a friend - before deciding whether this is the book they want to take home.

With the help of a fun read-aloud, There's a Dragon in Your Book by Tom Fletcher, we had the opportunity to talk about taking good care of our books.

And then, we embarked on our first author inquiry of the year. Those of you familiar with our library program and this blog know that we conduct author inquiries in all Primary grades throughout the year. They are a wonderful way of introducing students to authors and series, allowing students to practise important inquiry skills in the process; for example how to express a wondering and how to go about finding answers to these wonderings. The inquiries always create much interest in an author's books, like it is the case right now with the books by Mo Willems. Mo Willems is the author and illustrator of books such as Knuffle Bunny, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and the extremely popular Piggie & Gerald series. Our PK students love his funny stories, which they have been able to listen to both in English and Chinese.

We look forward to learning more about Mo Willems alongside our PK students this year.

As our Head of School Stephen Dare shared last week in the HKA News, all our professional bios are now available on the Directory in Veracross. If you would like to learn more about us, your PS Library Team, see our bios below. To discover more about us as readers, have a closer look at our shelfie pictures as each of the five books in the pictures represents a part of our reader identity. Curious to know what each book stands for? Stop by the library during one of our community afternoons - every Tuesday and Thursday from 3-4pm - and we are happy to share more, as well as assist you in exploring our collection and discovering some books you and your family might enjoy reading together. Looking forward to seeing you at the library!

Author inquiries are a wonderful way of getting our students excited about an author while allowing them to practise inquiry skills such as sharing observations, expressing wonderings and formulating questions as well as searching for answers in various ways. Our kindergarteners have just begun exploring the creative work of Australian author and illustrator Bob Graham.

As they looked through some of his books, they noticed and shared amongst others that Bob Graham is an author and illustrator, that he makes picture books, that his stories have different kinds of people and animals, that there are lots of different colors in the illustrations, that the books come in different sizes, and that they often make us giggle.

After making these observations, students began sharing their wonderings, and it is these wonderings that will drive our inquiry; for example

How does he get his ideas?
Does he also write chapter books and nonfiction books?
What does his day look like - does he work all day?
How long does it take him to make a book?
What comes first when he makes a book, the words or the pictures?
How do his books get to the library?

Our next steps will be to search for answers to our questions and wonderings. As our students pointed out today, exploring and reading Bob Graham's books is a great way of doing that. So far we read together Rose Meets Mr. Wintergarten  and How to Heal a Broken Wing, and our kindergarteners loved both stories. They had many connections and more wonderings to share.

In addition, our kindergarteners suggested using the iPads and speaking to people who know about Bob Graham to learn more. We are looking forward to learning more about Bob Graham over the next couple of weeks and enjoying many wonderful read-alouds together. 

It was wonderful seeing so many parents at the library last night as we specialists briefly shared a bit about our programs as part of Back-to-School-Night. We, the Primary Library team did this with the help of three books, each representing one of the ways in which we support the learning and teaching at Hong Kong Academy. In case you were not able to attend, here are the main points of what we shared.

For Every One (Jason Reynolds) - ​A space for everyone

We aim at providing a warm and inviting space, where
everyone feels welcome,
everyone finds the resources they need,
everyone feels safe to ask questions and seek answers,
everyone finds themselves reflected in the books on our shelves.

We do this by continuously developing our collection, so that it reflects and meets the interests and preferences of our readers and learners. In addition to books in various formats and on a wide range of topics, as well as online resources, we keep adding objects and artifacts to spark our students' curiosity.

How to Read a Book (Kwame Alexander) - nurturing a lifelong love for reading

We aim at nurturing a lifelong love for reading
by giving students a taste of the magic that can happen between the covers of a book,
by letting them experience the power reading has in helping us understand the world around us and ourselves.

We do this amongst others through read-alouds, author inquiries, book talks and recommendations, reflecting on reader identity as well as sharing our own love for reading. Most importantly, we give students the freedom and time to explore what is available and then let them decide what they want to read and the kind of reader they want to be.

A Chicken Followed Me Home (Robin Page) ​- supporting the development of inquiry skills

We support students as they grow as inquirers, equipping them with the necessary skills to be able to
express what they are curious about,
search for the respective information efficiently in a variety of sources.

We do this in collaboration with the classroom teachers, teaching the respective skills when and where they are needed, and building on them from year to year. The inquiry process students go through remains the same, no matter the students' age; what changes is the degree of independence with which students inquire. In addition, we continuously aim to nurture our students' curiosity, looking for opportunities to wonder, also by modeling our own interests and wonderings.

We look forward to seeing many of you in the library this year.
Remember: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-4pm, the library is open to the entire HKA community. Come and enjoy some reading time with your child, explore what our collection has to offer, and check out some books.

Our students are loving making shelfies, as you can see from the big smiles in the pictures below (while you only see a selection here, all of our students' shelfies are on display in the library).
For us teachers and librarians, it is always wonderful witnessing the enthusiasm with which students compile their shelfies, with how much confidence they locate the respective books, how passionately they recommend books to each other and celebrate when they discover connections between their shelfies. Therefore, this learning engagement does not only allow students to reflect on their reader identity but it is also a perfect way to (re)establish our reading community at the start of the school year.

Noticing how much interest the displayed shelfies always get from students in lower grades and knowing how well also our younger students can already reflect on who they are as readers, we decided to invite students in grades 1 and 2 as well to put together a shelfie - a "starter model" with just three books. There was much excitement when we announced it during the past week, allowing students a week to think about which books they might want to include before having their picture taken. Stay tuned to hear more about shelfies in grades 1 and 2!

It is hard to believe that the first week of the school year 2019-20 is already over; it just flew by! It was wonderful having our students back in the library reading, exploring, inquiring, filling the space with their enthusiasm and smiles. 

Besides looking for books, reading and checking out, there was a lot of interest for our new research station. Our students are such passionate inquirers!

During class visits, students got to play a sorting game through which they learnt a bit about Ms. Lynn and myself. They got stacks of images of book covers and had to decide which book matched which librarian. Through the book covers, students found out a bit about where we come from, our families and special interests.

Below are the book covers we used - and if you have a child in grades 3-5, they can tell you all about the meaning behind these :)

This game also provided an introduction into thinking and chatting about who we are as readers. I will share more about this next week, as we continue our conversations during the next class visits. 

What a great first day of the school year 2019-20! Our library is alive again, filled with enthusiastic readers and inquirers. It was wonderful seeing so many of you, parents and students, all rested and relaxed and ready for the new school year. The morning passed so quickly...

...as students were browsing and exploring our book shelves...

... were reading and sharing books with each other...

...parents stopped by with their children to read...

...some classes came for their first library vist...

... and students excitedly checked out their first books!

And, of course, we had lots of fun with this read-aloud! 

A wonderful first day! We can't wait to see more classes and more students tomorrow!

Are you excited about the first day of school tomorrow? Looking forward to visiting the library? Well, if you can't wait until tomorrow, here is a slideshow with some images that we just took, to give you a sneak peek. We hope that gets you even more excited about coming to school and the library in the morning. We can't wait to see you!