RES Library Media Center News

Fourth graders at RES just finished a unit on media literacy their Enrichment Library classes. They learned about several strategies that advertisers use to get people's attention and convince them to buy products. Then they practiced finding those strategies in different kinds of advertisements. Finally, the scholars created video advertisements for books, also known as book trailers, to try to convince other scholars to read their favorite stories. We hope you enjoy the book trailers! Can you identify some of the strategies used by our scholars? They may include Association, Bandwagon, Beautiful People, Bribery, Celebrity Endorsements, Experts, Explicit Claims, Fear, Humor, Intensity, Maybe/Weasel Words, Plain Folks, Testimonials, Repetition, and Warm and Fuzzy. We share all our scholars' book trailers on YouTube and Twitter. Sometimes we hear back from authors that they liked the trailers! We have added those mentions below the videos. S.S. Taylor, the Author ...

Blog posts are done! You can see them at the  RES Second Grade Animal blog . Second graders at RES have just completed a nonfiction writing and blogging unit. This is a collaborative unit taught by the second grade teachers and Beth Redford, our library media specialist. First, second graders chose interesting animals, researched them in the PebbleGo online database, and wrote down facts to use in their blog posts. Second, the scholars used their notes to create informational writing pieces about their animals. They used their strategies from Writing Workshop to write introductions that hooked their readers, transitions that kept their readers interested, and conclusions that wrapped up their pieces. They also used what they knew about nonfiction text features to add illustrations, diagrams, and labels to help their readers better understand their animals. Finally, the second graders used the Blogger iPad app to create posts for the RES Second Grade Animal blog . They type...

Fourth graders at RES are wrapping up a unit on media literacy. They learned about several strategies that advertisers use to get people's attention and convince them to buy products. Then they practiced finding those strategies in different kinds of advertisements. Finally, the scholars created video advertisements for books, also known as book trailers, to try to convince other scholars to read their favorite stories. Here's another great example, from a fourth graders who used several advertising strategies to promote their book: Celebrity Endorsement, Humor, Bribery, and Intensity. As scholars practice using these strategies themselves, they become more aware of how advertisers use the same strategies try to influence them. That's the media literacy piece! You can see even more of these fantastic book trailers on the RES Library Featured Book Review list on YouTube.

Second graders at RES have been working on a nonfiction writing and blogging unit. This is a collaborative unit taught by the second grade teachers and Beth Redford, our library media specialist. First, second graders chose interesting animals, researched them in the PebbleGo online database, and wrote down facts to use in their blog posts.  Researching facts about bobcats and lynxes Anacondas have how many teeth?!? Second, the scholars used their notes to create informational writing pieces about their animals. They used their strategies from Writing Workshop to write introductions that hooked their readers, transitions that kept their readers interested, and conclusions that wrapped up their pieces. They also used what they knew about nonfiction text features to add illustrations, diagrams, and labels to help their readers better understand their animals. Classroom chart: Ways to write an introduction   This scholar used the "riddle" strat...

Fourth graders at RES are continuing to wrap up a unit on media literacy. They learned about several strategies that advertisers use to get people's attention and convince them to buy products. Then they practiced finding those strategies in different kinds of advertisements. Finally, the scholars created video advertisements for books, also known as book trailers, to try to convince other scholars to read their favorite stories. Here are two more great examples, from a fourth graders who used the advertising strategies of Intensity, Plain Folks, Fear (to get the viewer's attention), and Repetition in their book trailers for Smile by Raina Telgemeier and The Time of the Fireflies by Kimberley Griffiths Little. And a behind the scenes note: these scholars used the "app smashing" technique of using more than one application on a digital device to create a single final product. The fourth graders used the iMovie, Green Screen, Camera, and Notes apps together make the...

Video commercial (book trailer) for Life of Ty:Penguin Problems Written and filmed by an RES fourth grader! December 2016 at the RES library, by the numbers: Number of library books and other materials checked out by RES scholars, families, and staff: 1378 --  that's  92   per day  in our three weeks of school this month Number of TumbleBooks electronic books read and listened to : 155 Number of scholar visits to the library:  over 700  (13 classes per week plus additional class visits plus individual visits) Number of fourth graders who are creating video commercials for books (book trailers) as part of their media literacy unit:  49 . See the great example above!