3rd Grade Folk Tale Comparison

4-5 Biography Project

 Ask yourself these questions about the person you have chosen to write about:
Who? What? Where? How? and Why?

1. BOOKS
Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman.

This is one of the biographies we have in our library.You'll find it at 92 HOU.

There is a wonderful exhibit--Houdini: Art and Magic-- at the Jewish Museum in NYC now until March 27, 2011. In the exhibit there are movies of Houdini performing his escapes and the equipment he used for them, including handcuffs, the giant-sized milk churn, the "water torture" box, and the traveling trunk. I saw this exhibit over the weekend and I highly recommend it for all ages!

You can browse the biography areas of our library. In the 921 or B area you will find books about individual people (one book for each person). In the 920 area you will find books about groups of people. For example, a book about explorers, a book about American presidents and so on.These are collections of biographies.

2. ONLINE REFERENCE
Search for a famous person in World Book Online. If you use this online encyclopedia from a computer at school you do not need a user name and password. If you go to this encyclopedia on your computer at home you will need a user name and password, which you can get from Mrs. Feldman in the library.

Tips on how to write biographies from Infoplease.

3. KID FRIENDLY SEARCH ENGINES

Internet Public Library

QR Technology from the NEIT conference

Where will this QR code take you? To find out, do the following:

1. Download a QR reader onto your smartphone. Here are some sites:

QuickMark (iPhone 3), QuickMark 4 ( iPhone 4),i-nigma 4 (iPhone 4), NeoReader (free)

 UpCode or BeeTagg (Blackberry). Your phone has a QR code reader (Android?)

2.Take a photo of this QR code with your smartphone. Where did this QR code take you?

3. You can access a free QR code generator through your computer from:
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
http://myqr.co

Teen Room at Adriance Library

It looks like a cappuccino bar with bar stools and tables, comfy seats, and a TV. Checkout the new teen room at Adriance Library in the city of Poughkeepsie for students in high school. The Teen Room has computers, books,  multimedia materials and, at scheduled times, gaming. It also hosts special events including cooking, SAT prep, and anything else in between. You can read Teen Room News on the Poughkeepsie Public Library Web site for more details.

The Big Read

This year everyone's reading the Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. It's not too late to join in the events and lectures that are being held in the Poughkeepsie area. The Big Read is a national initiative to encourage reading across all states and age groups. Each year, local communities choose books to share with accompanying events, lectures, videos and podcasts.

Do School Libraries Need to Have Books?

I found this thought-provoking video on the topic of books and libraries on YouTube. It is a panel discussion from TV Ontario about the role libraries and teacher librarians play in students' learning and the changing library environment. The panel participants include two teacher librarians who also discuss the role of print materials in this new digital information environment. The discussion covered many issues relating to literacy that are of relevance not only in Canada, but also in the USA, the UK and other countries around the world. It also answered many questions that I have about being a school librarian in the 21st century.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth

For those of you (like me) who love to read Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series mark your calendars for November 9th when book #5, The Ugly Truth will be published. Our library has the first four books in the series: Diary of a Wimpy Kid; Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules; Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw; and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. Jeff Kinney has also written Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Do-it-Yourself Book and The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary. If you saw the Wimpy Kid movie this summer, let me know what you thought of it. How did it compare to the book? I heard that there will also be a second Wimpy Kid movie coming out next year.

Here's a video of Jeff Kinney speaking about some of his favorite books, many of which are my favorites, too and are in our school library.

Ethical Behavior in a Digital World

Howard Gardner's thoughts on what it means to be ethical in an age of new digital media.

Summer Reading

Reading lists from the public library

American Library Association: Building a Home Library
Four bibliographies for building a home library.

Bank Street College of Education: Best Books for 2009-2010
Children's book committee recommendations for the best children's books organized by children's ages and topics of interest.

Children's Literature Web Guide
Links to many Internet resources including children's book lists, authors' web sites, award winning books and parent and teacher guides recommended by the University of Calgary, Canada.

Reading Rockets: Choosing and Using Kids Books
Links to articles on how to choose and use children's books at home or school.

Hudson Children's Book Festival

 

There will be many children's authors and illustrators in Hudson this Saturday, May 1 at the  

Hudson Children's Book Festival.

Cyber Safety Booklet for Parents and Kids

The Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies recently released a new booklet to help parents and teachers teach kids about Internet safety. Parents can download the booklet from the Onguard Online web site.

In Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online, OnGuard Online gives adults practical tips to help kids navigate the online world.

Kids and parents have many ways of socializing and communicating online, but they come with certain risks.  This guide encourages parents to reduce the risks by talking to kids about how they communicate – online and off – and helping kids engage in conduct they can be proud of.  Net Cetera covers what parents need to know, where to go for more information, and issues to raise with kids about living their lives online.

Web Sites about The Middle Ages

Biographies from Infoplease
Fact Monster from the Family Education Network
Historic Figures from the BBC
Who's Who in Medieval History from About.com

5/6s Notable People from the Middle Ages Research Project

Here are some useful sources of information in our library about notable people who lived during the middle ages.We have many books about the middle ages and a few of them are listed below. We also have many online resources for your research. See below for access to the online resources.

Above: An engraving of Marco Polo. 
Below: An engraving of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
You can illustrate your research with free clip art like these for students and teachers from ClipartETC an online service of Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse.

PRINT RESOURCES

Note: If you browse along the shelves near these books you will find many more books about the same topics.
Reference Section
REF 031 WOR World Book Encylopedia
REF 909.07  BIN An Age of Empires 1200-1750
REF 909.07 KNI Middle Ages (50 biographies of notable people from the middle ages)
REF 940.1 CAN The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages

92 section for individual biographies, including:
     92 CLE Cleopatra
     92 ELE Eleanor of Aquitaine
     92 JOA Joan of Arc
     92 POL Marco Polo
     92 SAL Saladin

920 In this section there are books that include many biographies in one book, including:
     920 ASH Herstory: Women Who Changed the World
     920 GRO Great Explorers
     920 HOP Six Medieval Women



909.07 and 940.1 areas have many history books about the middle ages, including:
      909.07 HAN The Middle Ages: An Illustrated History
      940.1 Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages

ONLINE RESOURCES

Follow this path to gain access to many online resources:

MyPDS to Library to Research

On the Research page you will see links to library catalogs, online encyclopedias, databases, and E books. Go to the tables to see the links to these resources and the user names and passwords you will need to access them from off campus.

Online Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia Britannica Online
Grolier Online

E Books

How Do I Find a Book?

Our school library uses the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system to organize books. Books on the same subject are put together in different "neighborhoods" in the library. You can have fun learning about how DDC works by watching this interactive DDC tutorial.

2010 Winter Olympic Games

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games will take place from February 12-28 and will officially begin when the Olympic Cauldron is lit in Vancouver, Canada. The Vancouver Winter Olympics web site gives information and links about every aspect of this year's Games with schedules of events, listings of records and medals, photos, videos and profiles of athletes. There is also a lot of information about the Olympic Games on the official Olympic Games web site, with videos and photographs of Olympic athletes competing in both summer and winter sports.

The Green Games
The events of this year's Winter Olympics have been organized in order to cause the minimum ecological impact on the environment and to incorporate the art and culture of the Native peoples of the region.You can visit the Olympic Museum for a virtual tour of Native art created for the Winter Olympics and information about the wildlife of the region.

Winter Olympics Mascots
Younger students might be interested in finding out about some of the endangered animals in Canada by playing games and watching videos about the Vancouver Winter Olympics mascots.
The Winter Olympics mascots are cartoon interpretations of real and mythical animals of the region. For example, Miga is half killer whale and half kermode bear, also known as "spirit bear" by the First Nations of Canada. Watch this video to see a kermode bear in the wild.

Help for Haiti

Impact Your World from CNN World

The students at our school have already made an impact on the world by raising funds from a bake sale to help the people of Haiti. For more ideas about how to help, here is a useful web site from CNN that provides lists of reputable charities providing disaster relief. These resources include some of the highest-rated charities by CharityNavigator.org (an independent and non-profit organization that evaluates and rates thousands of charity groups based on effectiveness and financial stability) and are vetted by CNN journalists for credibility. This is a useful starting place for exploring the various ways you can make an impact.