Our third graders have continued to enjoy listening to picture book stories by Oliver Jeffers as well as watching videos to find out more about the talented picture book maker. There has been much interest for his books during check out time and I hope you, the parents, have already had a chance to see one of his books at home.

As part of this inquiry, and in order to ensure that our students can independently locate the books by this author/illustrator (as well as other authors and topics of interest), we also embarked on revisiting how materials are organised on our shelves and how the library is set-up in general. As call numbers are key to locating library books (with and without the use of our online catalog), we started revisiting the make-up of call numbers with the help of the following video (which many of our returning students remembered well from last school year).

Next, we sent our students on a call number scavenger hunt, to allow them to apply this knowledge around call numbers in locating books in all of our main areas, i.e. the Everyone area (where we keep our picture books), the Fiction area (which houses all of our chapter books and middle grade novels) and the Nonfiction area (which houses all of our informational books). 

With great team effort and much focus, our third graders located books based on the given call numbers in the respective areas.

After they had located all books through their call number, they shared some general observations they had made in the process about the set-up of the library, such as all fiction books (in the Everyone and Fiction areas, are organised in alphabetical order according to the author's last name; and books in the Nonfiction are arranged in numerical order, each number representing a topic as defined by the Dewey Decimal Classification system.

In addition to enjoying read-alouds, sharing thoughts and ideas about the stories, and participating in other learning engagements like our scavenger hunt, our third graders love their check out time: searching for books to take home as well as finding a comfy place to read and share books with friends. Keep up the great work, Third Graders!

Our third graders started the year by reflecting on who they are as readers. They did this by first pulling a stack of five books representing their reader identity, and then, in a second step by interviewing each other about the books included in the stack and what they stand for. They shared some thoughts about what makes them feel good about reading as well as what can make it challenging, who they enjoy talking with about books, and wishes and goals with regard to the reader they want to become. Our third graders did a wonderful job and I hope you all had the opportunity to listen to their interviews which they shared through SeeSaw. Spending time on reflecting on who we are as readers, especially at the start of a school year, always creates much energy and excitement; at the same time it empowers our growing readers as they realise that it is really up to them, that it is their respeonsibiity, to decide on and work towards the reader they want to be.

In order to find answers to our questions, our students suggested reading his books, exploring online resources and talking to people who know about him. And this is exactly what we have been doing: sharing read-alouds, talking about what we noticed, and watching videos/interviews with and about Oliver Jeffers.

Our third graders took notes, to then share some interesting facts they learned about him from the videos/interviews; for example, Oliver Jeffers likes telling stories and thinks that picture books are the ideal platform for him to do that; with his sories, he wants to unlock his readers' imagination; he enjoys collaborating with others; the creation of words and picture goes hand in hand; he uses a wide range of tools; he gets ideas from all around him; and making picture books is his dream job. 
As with all of our author/illustator inquiries, students have the opportunty to practise inquiry skills while discovering books they might enjoy reading as well as finding some ideas and inspiration for their own writing. I encourage you to ask your third grader to share an Oliver Jeffers book with you; I bet you will love reading his books together!