Summer Reading Fun – Getting Organized & Getting Started! A Note for Parents

Dear Parents,

Welcome to my web site where you will find a few tips and ideas for summer reading.  Before we begin, just a few words about the general strategy behind these recommendations:

  • The summer reading program will be presented with fun and exploration in mind.  There is no direct academic link to your children’s classroom work or to their reading levels, but the more they engage with interesting texts, the more they will grow.  It is recommended that all students read each day during the summer holiday.  This summer reading program is meant to support daily reading over the summer and compares to a summer reading program that would typically be offered by a U.S. public library.
  • Most of the families interested in summer reading have students in Grades K-2.  Although I will provide materials for K-2 and 3-5, my examples may skew towards younger learners since they are the majority of our participants.
  • Because many of you do not have access to a physical library for print materials, I will focus on our digital collection.  You will need to access all of our digital tools and libraries to take full advantage of this summer reading program.  Please use print materials whenever you can find them in your own homes and local libraries.  However, the weekly guides will point you towards our digital collections.  I will provide instructions as we go along, but resources will be linked from our PXES Library Guide Home Page, found here:  PXES Library Guide Home Page
  • Remember to read as much as you can in your child’s mother tongue.  All of our students are learning several languages and it is important to maintain mother tongue mastery.  My recommendations will be for English language materials, but I encourage you to substitute texts in your mother tongue whenever possible.
  • Literacy consists of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  Your child gets a lot of reading and writing at school.  Summer is thus the perfect time for speaking and listening.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of reading aloud as a family and talking about the ideas together.  Audiobooks can meet the need for listening, but family read-aloud time is important for everyone!  For parents, I highly recommend The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon, the Wall Street Journal’s children’s book reviewer.  Ms. Gurdon’s work combines brain science with history and personal anecdotes in support of the tradition of reading aloud.  Don’t miss it!  Our Sora copy is currently available and ready for check-out!

Should you have questions at any point, please do not hesitate to get in touch.  I will be checking my school e-mail several times a week throughout the summer.  My SAS e-mail address is:  betty.turpin@saschina.org

Thank you, and look for the first week’s Summer Reading Guide in the next 24 hours.

Your Friend in the Library, Miss Betty

The Librarian’s Role in the Primary Years Program Exhibition (PYPX) – Notes and Thoughts from My Own Practice

During the last year of the PYP program, one of the six Units of Inquiry is PYPX or, as it is commonly called “Exhibition.”  In this unit and during Exhibition I step back from regularly scheduled lessons and offer whatever support the kids need to see them through the project.  Usually this involves working with small groups as they progress through the inquiry cycle, and usually, but not always, this also involves assisting with finding and checking sources of information and citations.  Here are a few guiding principles I’ve come to rely on over the years in planning and working to prepare students for Exhibition. Your school and your program may be slightly different, but these have been my “take-aways” from both international schools I’ve been privileged to work for.

  1. Before PYPX, a strong librarian and library program will teach students:
    1. How to use the library catalog, especially persistence in keyword searching and advanced searching functions. Most fifth graders are beginners in using keywords and performing key word searches.
    2. How to use the school’s digital resources, especially a digital reference suite like World Book Online or Britannica Online. There may be other components of your digital collection which will be helpful during PYPX. I like to have a current events source that is elementary friendly (we use The Day Explorer), and access to National Geographic Kids (we have this through our GALE/Cengage subscription.)  I have found academic databases to be too difficult for Grade 5 students and generally try to keep them working in a child-friendly framework.
    3. How to evaluate information sources. I strongly favor Karen M. Christensson’s RADCAB model and have built lessons around her framework.
    4. How to take notes.
    5. The importance and necessity of citing sources, and how to create accurate citations. I do recommend Noodle Tools for students as young as Grade 5, but you definitely need a plan for source citations before PYPX begins.
PYPX at GEMS World Academy, Dubai
  1. From the Grade 5 Teaching Team, you’ll need:
    1. Mentor guidelines. Make sure that some of your content is included in the mentor guidelines.  I’ve found it is very helpful if mentors understand how the students have been taught to evaluate information sources and create citations.
    2. Rubrics.
    3. Guidelines or requirements for types and numbers of information sources.
    4. Topics with guiding questions and lines of inquiry. Check this against your print collection.  It is often the case that several projects cannot be supported by the print collection.  Kids and mentors need to know this right up front so that they can get busy looking elsewhere if there is a requirement for print materials.  Ex:  Using 3-D printing to build houses.
    5. Teams of students if students are working together on PYPX. If not, a guide to each student and his/her project topic.
  1. During PYPX:
    1. Keep open hours. Every regularly scheduled library class becomes working time for PYPX.  During these periods, I am always on hand to answer questions.  Most kids are looking for sources, taking notes from sources, or creating citations from sources.
    2. Offer mini-workshops on citations. Despite your best efforts, a lot of kids will have forgotten how to use your citation guidelines.  For us, they need help remembering Noodle Tools, what it is used for, how to get a bibliography out of the system, etc.
    3. Check the kids’ sources and citations. Many, unfortunately, will still go down the paths of Wikipedia, personal blogs, web pages without authors, etc.  There is a lot of effort needed to draw them back to the basics.  All sources used in PYPX research should meet the guidelines for information source evaluation you have taught them earlier.
    4. Serve as a mentor if you feel you can. Some years I have been a mentor and I’ve had a great experience with my students.  But, some years there have been so many kids who needed help that I stepped back from being a mentor just so that I could be sure to have enough time to check sources and citations for all of the Grade 5 kids.

General Remarks:

PYPX is meant to be a celebration of the students’ learning journeys over the years they have been in the PYP program.  Exhibition showcases what the students are capable of doing, including taking action, in an inquiry project of their choosing.  In keeping with these goals, try not to teach the students anything new in PYPX.  By the time a student reaches PYPX, he or should already have everything needed to be successful from a research and inquiry perspective.

Instead, during PYPX, offer guidance and support as the principles already learned are applied in new and challenging contexts.  I have found that PYPX is a very busy time for a school librarian.  I spend a lot of time answering questions and offering guidance on common questions such as:

  • “I don’t know who made the web site . . . . “
  • “I don’t know when the web site was published . . . . “
  • “I can’t find anything in the library . . . . . “
  • “What is an interviewee?”
  • “When was this book published?”
  • “How do I cite a YouTube video?”
  • “Can I use Wikipedia?”

All of these questions come back to basics which ideally have been taught earlier in the library and information literacy curriculum.

For my students, some of the challenges of PYPX have included:

  • Students choosing topics that are so cutting edge that there are very few sources of information. Ex:  Flying Taxis, 3D Printed Houses.
  • Students not narrowing their topic down far enough to make a reasonably sized project. Ex:  “Women’s Rights” as opposed to “Voting Rights,” or “Wage Equality.”
  • Students choosing topics for which limited information is available for their age group. Ex:  Child soldiers.  (Most of this material is written for Middle School and above.)
  • Students failing to use the index in printed source material.  It is impossible to gauge a book’s complete content from the title, and young learners need to use indices to get the most out of the printed collection.
  • Getting students to look beyond the headlines. There are an infinite number of great topics which never had an international headline, but which do tie to the UoI or PYPX Transdisciplinary theme.  I like to work with my students in one lesson on topic exploration just to get them to try to think more broadly about interesting topics.

PYPX is a time to celebrate what the students can do.  Enjoy this project with your students, reinforce what you have already taught them, and work with the Grade 5 Team to keep them on track.  But, keep your running shoes on – you will be busy!

14 November 2018

Your Friend in the Library, Miss Betty

 

 

Ecosystems #4: Print vs Digital Information Sources

Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, students compare print and digital information sources.  Most of the students are familiar with both print books and digital devices, but the comparison is a good exercise.  It asks them to think critically and objectively about what each kind of source can do for them, giving them perspective and a better framework for selecting information sources.  I developed this lesson for Grade 3, the age at which students may begin to use digital devices for information searching, and I’ve had good success with it.

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

3-4

Objective:

To compare print and digital information sources.  (AASL 1.2.2, “Demonstrate confidence and self-direction by making independent choices in the selection of resources and information.”)

Suggested Time:

40-50 minutes

Success Criteria:

Given the categories on which to base their comparison, each student will complete a graphic organizer chart comparing print with a digital information source. 

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

We can find information in many places.  Paper books are only one of those places.  You’ve used paper books recently to find five facts and create a short comic story based on those facts.  However, we can also find information from safe and trustworthy websites.

A website is a place on the World Wide Web that contains information about a person, organization, etc., and that usually consists of many Web pages joined by hyperlinks.

A webpage is a page of words, pictures, etc., that is shown on a website.

Today we will look at one of those websites (which has many webpages) called DK Find Out.

2. Main:

Pass out the student assignments.  Go over the instructions together, making sure that the kids understand their task.   I prefer to do the exercise together, as a group, so that no one gets sidetracked or loses focus.

Remind the students that they have already learned the parts of an information book.  They have also used information books to find facts.  Today they will use a digital source to find facts, then they will compare what it is like to use a print information source vs what it is like to use a digital source.

Project your computer or iPad and, as a class, use DK Find Out to gather five facts.  This will be easy and fun to do.  Here are some of my favorite kid-pleasing “facts.”

  1. Woodpeckers make a very unusual sound.  (Animals and Nature, Birds, Woodpeckers, Audio file)
  2. Drums come in all shapes and sizes.  (Music and Literature, Musical Instruments, Drums)
  3. The most popular car of all time was the VW Beetle.  (Transport, History of Cars, Most Popular Car)
  4. “Ahoy Maties” means “Hello Friends.”  (Talk Like a Pirate Video)
  5. Oil is less dense (lighter) than water, so floats on the top of water.  (Science, Forces and Motion, Floating and Sinking)

Ask the children to record five facts on their assignment sheets.  After you have done this, ask them to think about how print and digital resources are alike or different.  Together, work through the chart on the assignment sheet so that they can carefully compare the two.

3. Conclusion:

Remind the kids that books are great sources of information, but so are electronic sources.  Most of the time they will use both print and electronic sources to find information for school work and personal inquiry.  Both can be helpful for different purposes and at different times.  They must become skilled users of both kinds of information sources.

I like to have kids write in big letters, “Print and digital information sources are both important,” as a wrap-up and finish to this lesson.

Resources:
  1. Internet connection and access to DK Find Out web site.
  2. Ability to project your computer screen so that the class can gather facts together.
  3. Copies of the Student Assignment (attached).
  4. A few paper books on ecosystems or animals that live in specific habitats.
  5. Devices for the kids to use if you want them to explore DK Find Out on their own after the assignment is complete (optional).
Notes:

Kids can get very distracted in this lesson.  DK Find Out is so full of amazing audio and video files that the kids just hop around discovering new sights and sounds.  It becomes very difficult to pin them down and get them to complete the assignment, so I have learned to just do the assignment together.  Once the work is done, they can explore DK Find Out on their own.

Recommended books for this lesson:

A handful of Unit of Inquiry books so that they can be used as points of comparison against the digital source.

Key Terms:

Digital Information Sources, Web Sites, Web Pages

Student Handout, Print vs Digital

Ecosystems #3: Five Facts and a Story

Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, students gather five facts from a nonfiction text.  Then, they use one or more of those facts to write an original story in comic book format.  It’s a sure winner because kids love to make comics!  The lovely Corinna Mansfield, currently at Renaissance College in Hong Kong, taught me this creative and fun-filled approach to working with nonfiction texts.  A sample of Corinna’s work is attached.  Thanks, Corinna!

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

3-5 

Objective:

To gather five facts from a nonfiction text and then use at least one of those facts in a comic-style story.  (AASL 2.1.6, “Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, technology skills to create products that express new understandings.”)

Suggested Time:

45-55 minutes.  However, the comic template is large and if the children make intricate drawings or have trouble translating their facts into images, you may need more than one lesson for them to complete the project.

Success Criteria:

Each student will gather five facts from a Unit of Inquiry text on ecosystems or animals that live in specific ecosystems.  Once the facts have been identified, students will use one or more of them to write a short comic-style story.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Remind the students that they have been learning about elements of nonfiction texts.  Nonfiction texts are loaded with information!  But, as students, you are tasked with taking in the information out of the text and making it your own.

Ask the students to tell you the difference between a fact and an opinion.  Usually, teachers cover this material so I do not teach it.  The children should be able to tell you, but if they can’t, teach these basic concepts.

Explain the assignment.  Tell the students that they will be using the Unit of Inquiry books to find five simple facts.  Using five simple facts, they will create a comic-style story.  So, the assignment has two parts:

  1. Find five simple facts
  2. Illustrate the facts in a comic-style story

2. Main:

Pass out the student assignment sheets (see attached.)  The assignment sheets should be one piece of paper with printing on both sides.  When folded, there should be a front cover, a double page comic spread inside, and a back cover with space to write five facts.

Explain that the first step will be to gather five facts.  Students should choose one of the Unit of Inquiry books that interests them that they can read independently.  Using the text, students will write five simple facts on the back of the assignment sheet.  After the five facts are written down and have been checked, the students can work on their comic-style stories.

Give children time to gather five facts.  I have seen a lot of kids struggle to do this.  They will be required to read, think, and write information in their own words, which is quite difficult for some of them, so be prepared to support.  They can, of course, help each other.   However, each student should do his or her own work.

Once the facts are in place, encourage the students to think of a simple story that highlights at least one of the facts.  One of the most interesting student projects I have ever seen was from a little girl who collected facts on hippos.  She learned that mother hippos protect their offspring from crocodiles.  So, in her story, a mama and baby hippo were out for a swim in the river.  A menacing crocodile appeared, the baby started to cry, and the mama hippo scared off the crocodile.  This student put the mama hippo in a superhero cape at the end!  She used only one fact, but she had a delightful time on her project and the project clearly showed her new understanding.

3. Conclusion:

Ask students to reflect on their experience.  What was fun about this assignment?  What was hard?  What did they think of making a comic?  Would they ever want to do something like this again?  Have the students share their work with one another, tidy up, and place their comic-style stories in their Unit of Inquiry notebooks.

Resources:
  1. A selection of Unit of Inquiry books.
  2. Student Assignment sheet (see attached).
  3. Pencils.
  4. Colored pencils or art supplies for creating the comics.
  5. Additional comics templates from Printable Paper (optional) https://www.printablepaper.net/category/comics.
Notes:

I have done this assignment with students as young as Grade 2 but I find that students in early elementary (Grades 1 and 2) are simply not yet mature enough as writers to be able to handle a blank template.  Thus, I recommend using the lesson with Grades 3 and above.

You may very well need two periods to complete this project.   Please plan accordingly.  You will get great work out of the kids, but there are a lot of pictures to draw and that work can’t be rushed.  Be sure to show them how not every box needs a full picture.  In Mrs. Mansfield’s sample, some of her boxes only show a small part of her lion.

Be prepared in case students ask you for extra, blank comic templates.  My students enjoyed this process so much that I now keep comic templates for them in the library.  They know that they can choose a template and create a comic anytime.  Many comic templates are available online and are free.

Finally, there are apps that students can use to create comics.  If they already know the software, great!  However, if they don’t know the software or don’t have access to the software, stick with paper and pencil for now.

Recommended books for this lesson:

A selection of nonfiction texts on ecosystems or animals that live in specific ecosystems.  Use the books that the children have been using in their Unit of Inquiry.

Key Terms:

Facts, Comics, Creative Writing, Lions

Work Sample, Diary of Lion

Student Assignment Sheet, Diary of (Blank)

Ecosystems #2: Non-Fiction Texts, Part 2

Lesson Overview:

In this lesson, student complete work on understanding non-fiction texts. Last week students worked on textual elements of non-fiction books.  Today they will work on non-textual elements in non-fiction books.  If they know how information books are “built,” they will be more likely to work confidently and use them more effectively.

Lesson Plan:

Suggested Grades:

3-4

Objective:

To successfully identify both textual and non-textual elements of non-fiction texts.

Suggested Time:

40-45 minutes

Success Criteria:

Each student will be able to independently identify and explain textual and non-textual elements of a non-fiction text.

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction:

Last week we worked with information books.  We found and checked the table of contents and index.  We looked at heading and subheadings.  Who remembers what the difference between a heading and subheading is?  (Answer: Headings are usually chapter titles while subheadings show us the parts of a chapter.)   Today we will look closely at non-fiction (information) books again.  But, we won’t be looking at the words – we’ll be looking at everything except the words!!  Let’s see how much we can find out and how much we can learn.

2. Main:

Teach elements of the non-fiction text, one element at a time.  Be sure to have students record their findings on their assignment sheet.  The assignment sheet is the same one from last week.  This time, however, have the students work in the section for non-textual elements.

In this lesson, teach students the parts of the book that relate to pictures, diagrams, illustrations, etc.  These are usually:

Non-textual Elements:

  1. Photographs
  2. Captions (descriptions or comments that accompany pictures)
  3. Diagrams
  4. Illustration
  5. Maps
  6. Charts or Graphs
  7. Fact Boxes
  8. Anything else??

It is usually best if the students are seated at tables so that they can open and use their books comfortably.

I usually teach that:

  • Most students can identify a photograph, but very few know the term “caption.”
  • A diagram has labeled parts. This is new information to most students.
  • An illustration is a picture that is drawn by a person, not a picture taken by a camera.
  • Maps usually represent the land or water features of a place.
  • Charts and graphs show relationships in numerical data.  Examples are pie charts and bar charts.
  • Fact boxes isolate and highlight special information.

You will find many more non-textual elements because there is a wide variety of techniques used in non-fiction publishing.

In PYP programs, teachers often write their own curriculum and do not use textbooks.  If this occurs in your school, then children are expected to get information from non-fiction library books.  This lesson, paired with the preceding lesson, is essential for students to be able to work with confidence in non-fiction books.

3. Conclusion:

Ask the children to make sure that their assignment sheet is complete.  If anyone is missing something, ask them to work with a partner to go back and find the missing elements.

Congratulate the children on their work over the last two weeks.  Tell them that you expect them to be able to use non-fiction books easily now!  There will be lots of chances to practice working with the parts of non-fiction books as the year progresses.

Finally, ask the children to gather the books and return them to a central location in the library or return them to the classrooms for further Unit of Inquiry study.

Resources:
  1. A good supply of non-fiction books on the unit subject.  You need at least one for every child, but I prefer as many books as children in the class plus five or six more, just in case one of the books does not have all the features.
  2. Copies of Student Handout.  (Attached, but you should not need to make copies.   Continue working on the same handout from last week.)
Notes:

The same student handout is used both for last week’s and this week’s lessons.  Make sure you have the student’s assignment papers so that they can continue this week.

The “Elements of Non-Fiction Texts” lessons can be noisy.  The kids get so excited about what they are finding that there is a lot of talking and sharing.  You may wish to have a little bell or another signal to get the kids to quiet down and pass their books on to their neighbor.

Recommended books for this lesson:

A selection of Unit of Inquiry books from the library or the classroom.

Key Terms:

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Table of Contents, Index, Glossary, Headings, Subheadings, Keywords, Text

Student Handout, Non-Fiction Texts