RES Library Media Center News

Spanish books! Exploring nonfiction about reptiles with friends Lots of teeth in this nonfiction book Kindergartners have been exploring different collections of books during their library classes. Last week they investigated the Spanish collection, which includes the readaloud stories Senora Harris shares with her classes and many other fun and fascinating books. This week they have been picking books from the nonfiction collection. They were excited to check out books about snakes, origami, pets, volcanoes, horses, crocodiles, gemstones, bats, tractors, and much more. We encourage families to read these books together with their kindergartners!

What information can we learn from the photographs in nonfiction books? First graders are looking at nonfiction text conventions in their library classes, as well as in their classroom learning (see Mrs. Purvee's blog post about their classroom work!) This week we looked at photographs in nonfiction texts. We asked the question, what additional information do the photographs give us that is not in the words? We read a section of a book about pangolins aloud without seeing the pictures, and thought about what these animals might look like. Then we looked at the photographs and learned more about this animal's color, size, and other body features. Photographs give us so many additional details! In future weeks we will be looking at captions, tables of contents, and other useful parts of a nonfiction book. If you would like to learn more about pangolins, check out this World Wildlife Fund web page .

The Dorothy's List radio show featuring RES fourth graders discussing the book El Deafo will now air on VPR on February 8, during Vermont Edition at 12 noon and 7 pm. It will also be available on the Dorothy’s List podcast the afternoon of February 8. Thank you to VPR for this opportunity!

On January 14, 2016, RES fourth graders were interviewed by Vermont Public Radio reporter Amy Kolb Noyes for the VPR radio program Dorothy’s List . Dorothy’s List is a monthly show about the children’s books nominated for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher award, Vermont’s children’s choice book award.  Every month Dorothy’s List features a different title, and RES scholars were interviewed for the February program about El Deafo , an award-winning book written and illustrated by Cece Bell. Ms. Noyes interviewed our scholars as they discussed El Deafo , and she also recorded the fourth graders’ questions for the author. The radio show will air on VPR on February 1, during Vermont Edition at 12 noon and 7 pm. It will also be available on the Dorothy’s List podcast the afternoon of February 1. We are very grateful to VPR and Dorothy’s List for choosing RES to represent Vermont student readers!

Fourth graders are beginning Capstone Projects in their Enrichment  Library classes. They will be spending the next five months working on these individual research projects on topics they choose themselves. The scholars will be completing the following steps as they learn and present their new knowledge: Choose a topic Choose a research question Research and take notes Choose how to present your research findings  Create your presentation to share your research findings Evaluate your presentation with a rubric Here's a presentation we viewed with the scholars about the Capstone process. We look forward to sharing more about these projects as the spring goes on! Examples of Capsto ne Projects from previous years Erickson Capstone Projects 2015 Berliner Capstone Projects 2015   Senning Capstone Projects 2015   And a video from our Capstone Celebration in May 2015, where last year's fourth graders shared their amazing projects with family and friends

December 2015 at the RES library, by the numbers Number of library books and other materials checked out by RES scholars, families, and staff: 1350 --  that's 84 per day in our three weeks of school this month Number of TumbleBooks electronic books read and listened to : 299 Number of scholar visits to the library:  over 700 (13 classes per week plus additional class visits plus individual visits) Number of scholars served by the librarian during lessons and visits in classrooms:  over 100 Number of scholars who were introduced to computer programming during Hour of Code activities: 227 Number of second graders who researched, wrote, illustrated, and posted blog entries on the new Second Grade Animal Blog : 47