Happy Friday!

We had a busy week in the Castleton Elementary School Library Media Center.  Here are some highlights:

First graders began work on creating exhibits for a Castleton Zoo.  They will end up being more like museum dioramas, but nonetheless, animals in their habitats.  I saw some great inquiry, wondering and all around research happening.  Next week they will begin working in their groups trying to figure out what supplies they will need to design these exhibits.   Follow @MissLeavitt_CES to see some of the progress from her class!

With Mrs. Puccio and Mrs. Seres's second grade class, we are working hard on our biographies.  We are finding out that some people are a lot easier to research than others.  Do you know anything about the guy who invented the ear muffs?  Now I do! Meghan McCarthy wrote a great book called, Earmuffs for Everyone!:  How Chester Greenwood Became Known as the Inventor of Earmuffs.  I only got because it was on my Junior Library Guild order this winter--Thank you!  We also have the first woman firefighter being researched from the book, Molly, by Golly!  The Legend of Molly Williams, America's First Female Firefighter by Dianne Ochiltree and many more!  The week after next students will act out as their characters and I will interview them.  This is always fun!

I don't know if you know this already, but I absolutely LOVE Twitter!  I was lurking in a #txlchat and then chimed in.  One thing lead to another and now Miss Leavitt's class and I will be Skyping with kindergarteners in Minnesota on Wednesday to chat about Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst.  I have been leading a book group with a small group of students but now we will branch out, share the book with everyone and meet some cool midwest kids!  I'm so excited about this opportunity.  I test skyped with their librarian this morning and she's awesome!

We talked primary documents and annotated bibliography in 5th grade today in preparation for our NYS Archives Student Research project .  We opened up a Google Doc, shared it with our group members and now we are ready to go.  Casey Seiler from the Times Union will be our guest speaker on Tuesday to give us pointers on how to write a newspaper article.  We have some heavy duty work to do between now and the end of the school year!

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend.  I have two books to read: Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams Garcia and Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes.  What are you reading?