Library News

Welcome to week 4 and another busy week in the library. This week, classes are learning more about fiction vs. non-fiction books and listening to some great stories too.

This Week’s Reads

Last week, Kindergarten was introduced to the idea that books can be about things that are real or made-up and this week, I’m going one step further and introducing them to the terms, fiction and non-fiction.  They began their lesson by reading two books about cats and then discussed which one was real/non-fiction or not real/fiction. They were quick to tell me that they’d never seen a cat at school or talking like in ‘Splat the Cat’ by Rob Scotton, so were easily able to distinguish between the two! I set a challenge for all the cat owners though, do cats really have 24 whiskers as we read in “Pet Cats Up Close’ by Gillia M Olsen?

Stage 1 is reading a new book this week that has recently arrived in the library, ‘Gorgeously Me’ by Jonathan Van Ness. This beautiful story celebrates what makes us special and unique, which complements one of our Core Catholic Values; the sacredness of self. Students will look at the ways we are special and then draw 3 things that make them uniquely them. We’re also consolidating what we learned about organising fiction in alphabetical order last week by practising how to put picture books away in the correct location.

Stage 2 is expanding their knowledge of fiction and non-fiction, and this week will be sorting a variety of texts into each category. While some books are easy to identify, there’s a new type of non-fiction format that’s harder to tell. I’m seeing an increasing number of non-fiction narratives being published where there’s a fictional story combined with information about a particular animal and its habitat on the same page. Technically, these books are both fiction and non-fiction! One author who is writing a number of these books is Australian writer, Claire Saxby. These are just some of her wonderful books we have in our library.

Finally, Stage 3 is continuing to learn how to evaluate websites to determine if they're credible, less credible or fake sources of information. Students are introduced to a ‘Website Evaluation Checklist’ and then given links to some websites to determine if they’re a good source of information. Some of the questions on the checklist include:

• Can you tell if the author is an authority on the topic?
• Is the purpose of the website to give facts on a topic (not opinions)?
• Are there a lot of misspelt words or grammar mistakes?
• Are there a lot of advertisements or pop-up windows?
• Do the links on the website work?
• Can you find the same information somewhere else (other websites or books)?
• Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
• Does the information seem to be biased (showing favouritism to something or someone)?

In addition to learning these information literacy skills, we’re reading another chapter from ‘Brilliant Minds: Thirty Dyslexic Heroes Who Changed Our World’ by Shannon Meyerkort about Muhammed Ali.

National Simultaneous Storytime Day - Wednesday, 22nd May 2024

Keep an eye on Facebook this Wednesday as classes across HTS join millions of Australians participating in the NSS Day. At 12 pm, we will be listening to or watching Aura Parker read her beautiful story, ‘Bowerbird Blues’. If you would like to join in from home, you can register for this event here and watch the live reading on YouTube. It’s a free event as well!

PRC Update

I’ve had four students complete the Premier’s Reading Challenge so far and return their reading records for me to validate with the PRC website. The challenge ends on Friday, 23rd August 2024, so there is still plenty of time to join and read the books. When your child has finished the required number of books and you have logged them on the PRC site, please print this list off and return them to the library.

In a new initiative this year, every student who completes the Challenge gets to place a star with their name on it on our PRC Reading Superstars wall. Congratulations to Bethany Pearse in Year 8, who completed the Challenge this week.

SORA eBooks of the Week

I love this week’s theme from SORA, “I can’t remember the title but the cover was...”. For information on how to access the digital library, you can read about it here

Meet the Reader

Meet Jaxon Prosser from 6M who was the first borrower of Philip Bunting’s newest book, ‘The World’s Most Pointless Animals’ This is Jaxon’s third book he’s read from the series. Enjoy!

3W worked hard last week to find all the call labels we use in the library. Hopefully, this means they will now be able to find the books they want!

Coming Soon

For all the manga lovers, stay tuned, look what arrived yesterday!

Happy reading,

Mrs Toni Fraser