The end of the school year 2017-18 is just around the corner; a good time to reflect on the past year with our students. In the library this past week as students visited with their classes, we engaged in various reflection activities.

Our kindergarten and G1 students brainstormed as a class first about their past year in the library before going off with a buddy to take three pictures each: a picture with 1-2 books that show who they are as readers; a picture that shows something they learned and a picture that shows something they especially enjoyed in the library during the past year. Some of the learning our students mentioned are: inquiry circles and how to find answers to our questions, learning about different authors and topics, books helping us to learn to read and to learn about new things, books having different emotions, being able to choose the books we like, organising your own books at a home like a library (by author), inquiring with different people, returning books each week to check out new ones.

Our students in grades 3-5 got a chance to look at their check out history since January, the last time they had analysed the list of books they had read and set new goals for their reading. First, they tallied the genres, then they entered the numbers into a bar graph. While we will spend more time next week looking at what this data tells us about ourselves as readers and our reading journey this year, a few observations were already shared: some students expressed their surprise about the number of fantasy books they had read, as they hadn't thought of themselves as fantasy readers; others mentioned the variety of genres they had read and/or genres they had not included (yet). The best part for me as an observer was seeing big smiles on students' faces as they excitedly talked with each other about the titles on their lists and the books they had enjoyed this year.

​Last Thursday, we hosted the finals of the HKBoB Championship 2018, for primary schools. Our team had qualified for the finals with a fantastic performance during their semi-final (if you missed the post about the semi-finals, click here to read it). It was only the second time ever that our team got to the finals.

​Thanks to our wonderful PE Department, Operations and Tech Teams as well as Chef Chris and his team, we were able to welcome the teams from Independent Schools Foundation Academy, Chinese International School, Shatin Junior School, Kennedy School and Hong Kong International - and of course the parent supporters - to a beautifully set up gym. 

​After a welcome from Ms. Virginia, Mr. Comer, co-chair of the HKBoB Committee as well as coach of the CIS team, went over the rules with everyone, before starting with the first round of questions. Mr. Comer and Ms. Robinson, who is vice-chair of the HKBoB Committee and coach of the HKIS team, had kindly offered to moderate. It was wonderful having such experienced moderators, who made sure the rounds ran smoothly, creating a reassuring and friendly atmosphere for our young readers.

​As always when attending a HKBoB competition, I was in total awe of the students, who must sift through thousands of details in order to find the correct answers – and there were some pretty challenging questions to deal with. It was great seeing how much conferring was going on within the teams, how confident students stated authors and titles, how well they observed the rules. You could tell that all teams had been well prepared for the competition. It was therefore not surprising that it became a very close race for the title, with Chinese International School winning with just one point ahead of the second-placed team. Congratulations, CIS Champions!

​Our team made us very proud with their performance too, especially considering that our fifth graders were also presenting their PYP Exhibition projects – Wednesday evening and Thursday before and after the BoB competition. It was amazing seeing them so focused, making the most of their conferring time, and giving it their best effort once again. 

​For us coaches, the favourite moment though was seeing the reactions and  expression on our students’ faces as the new titles for the HKBoB competition 2018-19 were introduced – as you can see in the photos below. Their love, passion and enthusiasm for these books was priceless; a true celebration of love for reading and the best reminder at the end of the competition what HKBoB is all about.

After preparing throughout the past school year, reading from the list of 20 books, learning the authors' names and titles of the books, and attending weekly meetings to practise answering questions, the semi-finals of Hong Kong Battle of the Books 2018 were finally here! Last Thursday, our B.o.B. traveling team joined the teams of five other schools to show their knowledge about the books in a friendly competition: Clearwater Bay School, San Wui Commercial Society YMCA of Hong Kong Christian School, ICHK Hong Lok Yuen, Quarry Bay School, and the Canadian International School of Hong Kong.

Accompanied by our principal, Ms. Virginia, we headed over to Clearwater Bay School (our hosts for this semi-final), where we were warmly received by some of the students, their teacher librarian, and teachers.

There was time for a team photo and some last minute prepping of our team by Ms. Kim, while Ms. Deb and I got into our positions to help with scoring and judging during the competition. Ms. Angela Barwell, the teacher librarian at Clearwater Bay School, was the moderator, in charge of reading the questions and leading through the competition.

In total there were 15 rounds in which all of the students demonstrated their immense knowledge of the books they have read. I am always in awe of all of these young readers, who must sift through thousands of details to come up with the correct answer. We loved seeing our team so focused, doing a wonderful job in conferring with each other before answering each question, confident in stating authors and titles. They made us all so proud, not just because they got so many answers right, but also because they stayed focused and listened carefully to each question also while other teams were on stage. And then there were of course the biggest of smiles, when the results were announced, after some really "intense" rounds, as one of our students stated. Congratulations to all of the teams who did an amazing job!

Here are a few more snapshots from the competition:

A big THANK YOU to everyone who helped and supported us in preparing for the competition throughout the year in many different ways: our entire B.o.B. team, still 41 students strong, grade 4 & grade 5 teachers, Ms. Virginia, and of course parents - thank you all for your tremendous support, your enthusiasm and passion for the competition and the wonderful books! 

And here they are, our smiling winners of the semi-final of Group C of Hong Kong Battle of the Books 2018!

We are excited to be able to host the final, on Thursday, May 17, and look forward to welcoming the other finalists:

The Independent Schools Foundation Academy
Chinese International School
Kennedy School
Shatin Junior School
Hong Kong International School.

This morning during our Upper Primary Assembly, our B.o.B. team had a chance to show their Primary School peers, teachers as well as parents what Battle of the Books is all about. As many of you know, B.o.B. is a friendly competition among schools here in Hong Kong in which readers come together to demonstrate their knowledge around a specific list of books. The competition is open to students in grades 4-5 (Primary category) and grades 6-8 (Secondary category).

After having read as many books as possible from this year's Primary B.o.B. list and having attended weekly meetings throughout the school year, our teams were ready to show how much they knew about the books and how familiar they have become with the rules and procedures.

Our students did a wonderful job, especially considering the thousands of details they have to remember from the 20 books in order to answer the questions. I especially enjoyed watching them confer with each other, making the most of the given time to come up together with the right answer.

The semifinals for the Primary category will take place on Thursday, May 3, and we will be competing against five other schools: Clearwater Bay School (host), San Wui Commercial Society, YMCA of Hong Kong Christian School, ICHK Hong Lok Yuen, Quarry Bay School, and Canadian International School of Hong Kong. We are wishing our team a successful participation!

If you were not able to attend, you might enjoy watching the video below. 

You might have noticed some new posters around the library with helpful tips on what to do when you are not sure what to check out or have not been successful yet in finding your next book to read. Our amazing third and fourth graders have shared their favourite strategies, hoping this will help all of our library users to be successful in choosing books. It definitely helped our third and fourth graders just brainstorming and sharing their favourite strategies, as was apparent in the many books checked out that day.

You could also ask our third and fourth graders to suggest books by a favourite author to you. Our third graders, for example, are big fans of Oliver Jeffers, a wonderful artist, storyteller and picture book maker, who inspires our students with his creative writing and illustrating to read his books as well as to try out some of his ideas in their writing and illustrating.
Our fourth graders might suggest (picture) books by Allen Say, or Kirby Larson, an author whose books they are currently discovering through read-alouds in the library and the classroom. 

We have had a wonderful first week of 2018 in the library, with lots of sharing, reflecting, expressing of wishes, setting of goals, and beautiful stories. I always enjoy spending the first library visits of a calendar year brainstorming with students what they might want to wish for this new year as readers and library users. And while their is of course a wide variety of wishes and goals, the one hope all of our readers have is to discover more books they will love to read.

Our youngest students in PK1 and PK2, wished especially for particular kinds of books to read ("more princess books, more unicorn books, more LEGO books"), but also to be able to choose more books, to have reading time with a parent every day, and to be able to visit the library more often. Our Kindergarteners mentioned as some of their wishes to discover more books, read books from different countries, read more on their own, always choose their own books, read picture books to learn from illustrators how to draw better, to read more words by themselves, and to spend more time in the library reading.

Inspired by listening to The Book of Gold, which tells the story of Isaac Gutenberg, a young boy with little interests who grew up to become an avid reader and traveler, to say as an old man that he had lived a life filled with wonder, our first and second graders made their wishes for 2018. They want to ask more questions, find more answers by reading more books, read more different kinds of books, have more time to read, get better at writing by reading more books, share stories with each other, keep reading picture books as well as chapter books, just to mention a few of their wishes.

Our students in grades 3-5 went more in depth. They at first analysed their check out history of the first semester, looking in particular at the different kinds of genres read. They transfered the numbers into a bar graph to then interpret the data and set goals for the second semester. 

Over the next weeks and months, we will support our students in working towards their goals, in helping them make their (reading/library) wishes come true.

Below are the books that accompanied us this week as read-alouds for the various classes.

As the last piece in our exploration of rights and responsibilities as library users, readers and inquirers, our fourth graders looked into the concept of plagiarism and the importance of giving credit to those who created the sources we use. This was in collaboration with our technology integration coach, Mr Bruce, as it is an important element of our digital literacy curriculum.

​We began with a reflection activity. In groups, we asked our students to create a poster, representing some of the big ideas we explored over the past weeks. We promised to treat the group with the most creative poster to a bag of popcorn. You could tell that this little incentive made every group work extra hard. 

​So when we asked students at the end of the given time to move to another poster, crossing out the names on the poster to replace them with their own, there were puzzled looks around the library. Most students followed the instruction very reluctantly and mumbling clearly unhappy about this. When we then declared the winner, most students could not hold back any longer, especially the team who had originally created the winning poster, shouting “this is not fair”, “we did all the hard work”, “this is cheating”. 

​This started a powerful conversation about the importance of giving credit when we use information, images and ideas that were created by others. Especially with the ease of access to all kinds of wonderful resources through the Internet, it is easy to forget that the websites, the videos, the pictures, were put up there by real people, who might have spend hours, days, years in creating these. The least we can do to thank them for so generously sharing their work is to mention them.

​Next, our students inquired into how we give credit, how we cite our sources. By comparing actual examples of book and website citations, they quickly figured out that each citation states WHO created it, WHEN it was created, WHAT it is called, and WHERE it was published (in this order when using the APA style format, as we do here at HKA).

​Our students seemed relieved to discover that they can take advantage of a great add-on in Google docs – EasyBib – to create their citations. They got a first chance to try it out this past week. 

Below are two videos that show how the EasyBib add-on works and summarizes the main ideas we explored (note though that the second video uses the MLA style format).

Hello Fourth Graders! It looked like you had a lot of fun last week, exploring our physical library space and how the books are organized on our shelves. Here is a recap of some of the main ideas you revisited/discovered: 

• There are three main sections in the Primary library: Everyone, Fiction and Nonfiction.
• Everyone (picture books) is organized in alphabetical order by the author's last name.
• Fiction (chapter books/novels) is organized in alphabetical order by the author's last name.
• Nonfiction (informational books) is organized by topic according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system (each topic represented by a number).

In addition, we have a small Reference and a growing World Languages section.

I noticed that for some of you the starting point seemed the trickiest, knowing the exact place where each of our main areas begins. Have a quick look at these video clips and keep reminding yourself whenever you check out from the library.

Here comes today's task:

As you know already, our library provides access to many more resources beyond the physical space. Today, you will explore some of our online resources. Before you get started, a quick reminder about call numbers, that might come in handy.

The access point to all of our online resources is the Primary Portal. Open it up by clicking on the embedded link.

Watch the tutorial below on how to search for books in our online catalog.
​Then search for a book you might be interested to check out today. Find it on our shelves.

Watch the tutorial below on how to search for reliable and kid-friendly websites through our online catalog.
​Search for a website on a topic of interest. 

I hope you had fun exploring our online resources today and will make good use of them in the future. Keep in mind, that any time you want a refresher on how to search our online catalog, you can find the tutorials through our only2clicks page under Library 101.

And now, check out time! Enjoy!

Our fourth graders have been inquiring into human rights under the transdisciplinary theme Who We Are and in connection with this during their time in the library, we have been looking into what rights and responsibilities a library user and reader has. In a first step, we brainstormed all we do as library users and readers, to then divide these into rights and responsibilities. In some cases, our students argued well that it could be considered a right as well as a responsibility, depending on how we look at it. It was wonderful seeing everyone so engaged in the conversations and hearing our fourth graders speak so confidently about what rights and responsibilities are.

In a next step, we brainstormed which skills we need to be able to take advantage of our rights and honor our responsibilities. We started putting our thoughts in Padlets - see below - and will continue working on this after the break. Further, we want to revisit the skills we identified, in particular material arrangement, search strategies to locate resources in our library as well as online, our responsibilities in sharing and using resources and information as well as lifelong reading habits. 

Various read-alouds have helped us in getting conversations started around rights and responsibilities in the library/ education context: The Librarian of Basra (Jeanette Winter), Nasreen's Secret School (Jeanette Winter) and The Book of Gold (Bob Staake). I always find that sharing a picture book related to a respective topic is one of the best ways to get everyone wondering and pondering about that topic, while nurturing at the same time an appreciation of literature and demonstrating that no one is ever too old to enjoy a picture book. 

And, last but not least, our fourth graders have made good use of their rights as library users and readers, choosing their own reading materials and enjoying sharing books and recommendations with classmates.

​I hope you found something you will enjoy reading during the break, Fourth Graders, and look forward to hearing your recommendations after the break!

We have had an amazing turn out during our first two Battle of the Books meetings of the year, with about 50 students attending. Last week, we introduced the books and could tell from the excited response, that some of the books have already been read, enjoyed and become favorites among our students - for example, The War That Saved My Life, Heartsong, Because of Winn Dixie, Fish in a Tree, Pax, and The Bolds.

This week, a group of students who participated in B.o.B. last year, demonstrated what the actual competition looks like, how the questions are asked, what kind of questions are asked, and how the team confers before responding. Considering the large number of students participating this year, our readers were especially interested in finding out how we will choose the traveling team, which consists of 12 students. As also shared in an email with parents today, the following criteria will be guiding the selection process:

• Overall commitment (attendance, engagement during our meetings, time made to read B.o.B. books)
• Basic knowledge of the books (book title and author)
• In-depth knowledge (as demonstrated in answering practice questions).

Since B.o.B. is a team competition, we will also look at and guide students in showing sportsmanship, like listening to other team members, appropriately adding to the conferring before answering questions.

We stressed that B.o.B. is not a race, that it is not about reading as many of the books as fast as possible. It is about enjoying some beautiful stories, understanding what they are about, and what makes them unique. 

During our upcoming meetings, we will dive right into practice questions. This is what our students are looking forward to, the thrill of trying to figure out what book the question is referring to. Not only does it help our readers to get a feel for the questions and get to know the books better, but it is also a wonderful way of finding out more about books not yet read and then deciding on what to read next. 

We are thrilled about this wonderful start and look forward to an exciting year with our Battle of the Books team.