Happy New (calendar) Year!

It is so nice to be back in the building after Christmas Break and we’re glad to be visiting classrooms again. Library classes are right back into their routines. We have started a research project about New York State in 4th-grade.  3rd-grade classes are exploring folktales, fables, and myths. 2nd-grade is learning to find and request books that they really want from our library catalog. 1st-grade and Kindergarten are learning about Caldecott award-winning picture books.

Now that we're back for the New Year, the library staff would like to ask for help returning overdue books. We still have quite a lot of books out from last spring when we went remote. This year, since we’ve been working from carts, we’ve been a little more lenient about letting books go out when students have overdue items. We also haven’t been sending out weekly reminders, so some students are falling behind on book returns. If your student has overdue books, please help them locate them. Books can be returned to your student’s teacher even if it’s not a library day. We’d love to get these student accounts cleaned up and the books back on the shelves so they can circulate. If you have any questions about overdue books, feel free to email me at dabbott@westgenesee.org.

Don't forget to READ4FUN!!!

Mrs. Abbott

 

Happy New (School) Year everyone!!!

We are off to an amazing start to this unusual year.  Most of your kids have had library at least once and are getting used to our new “temporary normal”.

Library, like everything else this year, looks a little different.  Mrs. Graser and I will be bringing library to your students on a cart every week. We’ve done this before, during testing weeks, but never quite this way. The good news is, we will be checking books out, but because we are traveling by cart, students will be limited to one book. We also won’t check out every week, but for the time being, we will check out every other week. Obviously, we can’t bring the whole library on two carts so the selection will be a little less varied, but we are communicating with each group of students to tailor the books that go to each classroom as much as we can. Once our older students get reacquainted with our online catalog, they will also be able to send requests to the library to check out specific books.

When books come back to the library, they will be held in quarantine for 6 days and then put back into circulation. This is at the recommendation of OCLC (a national library research group) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

This seems like an excellent time to remind everyone…if you have any library books from last school year at home, please have your student bring them to school as soon as possible. Classroom teachers will be able to return them to the library. There are lots and lots of books still checked out from when we left for the pause. Eventually, we will send out reminders. If you have any questions about overdue books, please email me at dabbott@westgenesee.org.

In the coming weeks, we will be reteaching all of the online resources we introduced during the spring in our remote lessons. Students will be shown the revamped library website and resources like Bookflix, SORA, and MyON to remind them how to access ebooks and audiobooks whenever they want.

Stay tuned for more news from the library (carts)!

And don’t forget to

READ4FUN!

Mrs. Abbott

(Email me at any time at dabbott@westgenesee.org)

 

Hello Everyone,

I hope you and your loved ones have been staying safe and healthy. It certainly has been a wild and unusual summer vacation so far and we still have a month to go.  I’ve run into quite a few of you while out and about and all I can say is I miss you all so much! So much, in fact, I’d like to do another book club as a way to spend some time with anyone who is feeling the same way. The One and Only Ivan has been made into a movie and will start streaming on Disney+ on Friday, August 14th. I’d like to repeat what we did for Artemis Fowl...I’ll read the book in installments on zoom. If you have a copy of the book (pretty cheap at Walmart, Target or on Amazon), you can read along, if you don’t, you can just listen in. Then, anyone with Disney+ can watch the movie and we’ll have a zoom meeting afterward to get together and talk about it.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is a beautiful story about friendship and loyalty. Ivan is a silverback gorilla who has lived at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall for 27 years. He is generally content with his situation, but when Ruby, a baby elephant, comes to live at the mall, Ivan wants to find a way to give her a better life. The book won the Newbery Medal for outstanding children’s literature in 2013. Many of my students know that Charlotte’s Web is my all-time favorite book, and Ivan reminds me of that book a lot. I’m so excited to share it.

 So here’s how we’ll proceed. I’ve made a google classroom for the book club. All grade levels are welcome. If you are interested in joining the club, send me an email at dabbott@westgenesee.org. I’ll send you the classroom and the code to join. You’ll be able to join the zoom from the classroom.  I’ll start reading on Monday, August 10th. When we have an idea of who is in the club, I’ll announce reading times. Sessions should be about 30 minutes on most days. I’m confident we can do the book in five sessions.  I’ll record the zoom every day and post it to the classroom. If you can’t make any session, you can watch it there. 

If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I hope to hear from you soon.

 READ4FUN!

Mrs. Abbott