Reading Saves the Day!

ZOWEE!
We just completed our Fall Book Fair which runs virtually as a Book Store within our Library Media Center each Fall and Spring. Scholastic has outdone itself yet again with lots of new titles to read!

We just added up our sales and topped $10,000. even with this economy! We are so lucky to have a community that values reading and makes it a priority to support student learning!

As a result we have approximately $3000. of new titles for our school library, $100 worth of titles for each classroom library selected by each teacher, and we gave away over 40 titles to students through our Book Give Away online raffle run from our Media Center website. Students sign up for each title they would like to win and we announce the winners during Morning Ceremony the second week of our book fair. It has become the #1 favorite school wide event for our Bay Farm students as measured by our annual student survey.

I'll be tagging the titles reviewed here with "Book Fair" so you will be able to see some of the most favorite reads this fall from our Book Fair theme "Reading Saves the Day." And soon you will be able to also see what our students think about our books at Reading Saves the Day!

Encyclopedia Brown

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective
           written by Donald Sobol

My students have re-discovered a classic mystery series,  Encyclopedia Brown by Donald Sobol circa late 1980's. One of my teachers started reading them out loud, one story a day, and the class has now emptied out the entire shelf of these mini mysteries. The series is about a boy, Encyclopedia Brown age 10, whose father is the chief of police. Encyclopedia Brown has the gift of a memory that remembers literally anything and everything. He helps his father solve all the crimes in his town, although quietly behind the scenes. In each book there are up to ten mini mysteries to solve, with the actual solutions in the back of the book so the series lends itself to table talk discussions within the classroom or book clubs reading the series. Oldies but goodies!

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective  ISBN: 978-1417786220

Google for IPad: Voice Search!

Google for iPad: Voice Search Tool
So quite by accident today I found a new app for my iPad and it's Google! Ok... so nothing really new about using Google to search.....but what is new...at least to me....is that I can now search Google on my ipad by speaking my keywords into each search! And I can easily search maps, images, even wikipedia using this new app for iPad! Talk about Ease of Use!

And I'll be using this with my tweens Monday at my projection station in the Library/Media Center where I'll have my students work with keywords to determine the best words to use when searching for their topic assignments from their classrooms, narrowing down focus and best use of keywords. Monday's classes are working on Native Americans, Explorers,  California geography, and States information. Can't wait!

The Missing: Books 1,2,3

"The Missing"  series by Margaret Peterson Haddix
(also the author of Book 10 of 39 Clues!)

In Book One: Found, we meet Jonah, his sister Katherine, and Chip, who have received mysterious letters telling them they are each one of the missing, and that someone is coming to get them.  Together they face the dangers of a smuggling operation, the FBI, and time travel. In Book Two: Sent, the friends  find out that they were kidnapped from different historical periods and experience time travel and the dangers of fifteenth century English royal intrigue. In Book Three: Sabotaged, the adventurers find themselves involved in another historical mystery; this time in the sixteenth century. Book Three was chosen as a Junior Library Guild Selection and the author has won numerous awards for her other adventure and mystery series. Can't keep this series on my shelf!

The Missing
Book One: Found.   978-0-545-11645-9
Book Two: Sent.   978-1-4424-0767-1        
Book Three: Sabotaged.     978-0-545-29007-4

Using eBooks with Tweens

Using E-Books to Motivate Pupils Writing

This  Blip TV session shares a video presentation by Colin Hill an elementary teacher in England who presented this video for the K12.Online Conference in 2009. In the presentation he shares a WebTool called My eBook.com and provides a mini tutorial on how to create and publish an eBook. I was so excited when I found this today because this is a tool that we can truly use with our students to create and publish original eBook content. Imagine what tweens could do with this WebTool when you see examples created by 7-8 year olds!

Here is an e-book with his students' work published for everyone to be able to read:



Here is an example of a class poetry book created within class and then published as an eBook.



Here is an e-book of Cinderella, no longer in print. The future of publishing and preservation?