Library News

Welcome to week 5. It's hard to believe we’re nearly halfway through the term already!

This Week’s Reads

This week, Kindergarten continues to explore the differences between fiction and non-fiction stories and learn about the contents page and index, which help us to find information. We read two books about rabbits, ‘Pet Rabbits Up Close’ by Jeni Wittrock and then compared it to ‘Rodney Loses It’ by Michael Gerard Bauer, one of my favourite read-aloud books. Students examine the front covers for clues that can help them know if a book is fiction or non-fiction and then explain why they made that decision. This week, students are also having fun drawing their favourite object (like Penny Pen in our story) and how they would feel if they lost it. It’s a lot of fun!

Stage 1 is diving deeper into their study of non-fiction books and going on a scavenger hunt to look for text features such as tables of contents, indexes, glossaries, charts, and diagrams. We will first look for these in a new non-fiction book, the beautiful ‘Sensational Australian Animals’ by Stephanie Owen Reeder, and then read some chapters to learn some interesting facts.

Stage 2  - Who Am I?

I’m a librarian from the United States. In 1876, I devised a system to catalogue information books into ten categories. My system is still used in libraries around the world. 

If you answered Melvil Dewey, congratulations, but if you’ve never heard of him, ask your Stage 2 child this week. While in some lessons, I get to read fabulous stories, there are other weeks when we get to do ‘fun’ library skills sessions, and this is one of them. While not super exciting, the Dewey Decimal System is essential to understanding how to use a library and locate non-fiction books. Imagine if we didn’t have it, these books would be located everywhere, and how long would it take to find information?

To make it a little more enjoyable, students will have some fun digital activities to complete afterwards, including a DDS matchup and colour by Dewey number artwork. 

This week, Stage 3 is learning about chef Jamie Oliver, another famous personality with dyslexia, in the book ‘Brilliant Minds: 30 Dyslexic Heroes Who Changed the World’ by Shannon Meyercort. Oliver was told he was ‘dumb’ at school and spent five years in a student support unit, but he always knew he had a passion and talent for cooking. His message to students is inspiring; if you want to listen to Oliver talk about his dyslexic experience, you can watch him discuss it here.

Stage 3 is also learning to use Google's Advanced Search tools in their research project on an inspiring person with dyslexia. Did you know you can filter searches to specific domains (e.g., edu, gov), time frames, and even terms to include or exclude?

Here are 5F evaluating websites from last week - could they identify a credible website from some fake ones?

National Simultaneous Storytime Day

Last Wednesday, our school joined 2,359,147 people across 21,969 sites in Australia in reading or listening to ‘Bowerbird Blues’ by Aura Parker. I would like to thank our staff and students for participating in this shared reading experience, who also enjoyed various craft and art activities afterwards. #htsreads

Quick Bits

• Scholastic Book Club - this term’s catalogue will come in the next few weeks.
• Library Bags - I've run out of plastic bags I use when students forget their library bags. If anyone has some spares they could send in, that would be great. Thank you!
• Overdue Books - If your child has lost their library book, please send a note with your child so we can remove it from their record. 
• New Dork Diaries: This collection looked worn and sad, so we replaced it with some bright new editions.

Primary Fun in the Library

Students enjoy coming to the library at snack breaks for so many reasons. Last week, I saw students drawing, playing, laughing, talking, and enjoying one another’s company.

Bag Tales

Meet Blair in KD, who brought in a beautiful library pag painted by her clever aunty. What a special gift to bring to school!

Happy reading,

Mrs Toni Fraser