'Twas the Night Before YMA 2021 version

I still have all the feels of the night before the Youth Media Awards and so many other ones, too.  

Newbery

The closest I came to my typical quarter long Newbery project was my after school Newbery Navigators club.  A handful of dedicated readers read a bunch of books.  One loves Echo Mountain.  Another Mananaland. Every single one of them When Stars Are Scattered.  We read Clean Getaway aloud so of course we'd be thrilled to see Scoob and G'ma get some love. Over the summer, 4th grade teacher Mr. C swore that he didn't have to read another 2021 book because he already read the winner, We Dream of Space. Maybe this is the year for nonfiction and we'll be placing a sticker on All Thirteen or The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh (too old?). 

Caldecott

My 2nd and 3rd graders were on the "Caldecott Committee." What a year for picture books!  We read and scored as many as we could but I'm afraid that I still missed a bunch.  The third graders LOVED A New Green Day and the second graders couldn't get enough of Lift.

I force the kids to make one choice, but not me. This is a good thing. There's no way I could pick my favorite. I love We are Water Protectors, Outside In, Hike, In a Jar, The Old Truck....honestly, I love them all.

  

And because this year I have a fixed schedule, I'll be celebrating all week long.  I bought gelt (gold coins) and gold Hershey's kisses (without almonds) as my treat and hope that is festive enough for our "party day." I also found a gold backdrop for photo ops and some gold balloons.  Happy Youth Media Day.

Sibert

I was fortunate enough to run into 4th grade ELA teacher, Mrs. Roe, in the stairwell in November.  We chatted for about five minutes and came up with a Sibert Smackdown plan.  She would read books aloud and I would read others over Flipgrid.  4th graders read over a dozen Sibert Smackdown contenders. Considering that I didn't think they would read any, this is amazing!

With all but one class voting, the top two winners are Crossings and Your Place in the Universe.

If you can't sleep tonight or woke up early and want to watch a little preview before the announcements, feel free to check out their flipgrids: https://flipgrid.com/ff7c379e

Geisel

Ugh. I love Geisel.  I've met some amazing people through the Geisel project including Stephen Savage, Anna Kang and Chris Weyant, Jonathan Fenske (who always makes me lol).  Even though I have only read a few of the Geisel contenders, Egg or Eyeball is my favorite with Baloney and Friends and Mo and his squished jelly doughnut as close seconds.

And that's my wrap.  Tomorrow will be nothing like any other year but I'm hopeful it will still be exciting. I'll be celebrating all week and really putting my acting skills to test.  Find me on Friday afternoon to see if I'm as surprised at the announcements as I am tomorrow.  But now it's time for me to hit my pillow.  See you on the other side.

Yes, I Still Do Dewey

I had a great lesson on Dewey with the fourth graders on Thursday.
"Are we having fun?"
"Yes!"
10 minutes later: "Are we having FUN?"
"YES!"

It WAS fun and it was a great way to get to know the Dewey Section.
I asked them when we started to assess how well they knew Dewey.
Not so much.
At the conclusion of our lesson? Experts. lol.

NYC School Library System has a wonderful, comprehensive curriculum called the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC), created by the incomparable Barbara Stripling and her team in 2009.  Reimagined this spring, I highly recommend you take a look at it, if you haven't already.  Many of us in New York State turn to it frequently. I took one of the documents, spruced it up a bit, crossed my fingers (as I usually do almost every lesson) and hoped it would be a success.

Students had to log into their Google Classroom accounts (I am trying to go  paper free as much as possible this year), copy my document into their own drive and then they begin the scavenger hunt.

There is a Dewey Decimal "worksheet" in the Grade 3 IFC assessment.  I changed it up slightly and asked students to find books in a category and then take a selfie with that book.  It was an engaging, collaborative, lively lesson that incorporated not only Dewey skills but digital literacy as well. I knew it was a good lesson when kids asked if they can do it again tomorrow.

Alexis searching in the 600s.  Boys in the back in the 700s.

Jacob excited to find one of our favorite books translated in Spanish in the 400s.

There's more to the 300's than the 398s!

Ethan plowed through this activity. Future librarian for sure!

Nice job, Alexis! 

Is Dewey a thing of the past? Maybe?  But the thought of actually genrefying the library is overwhelming.  I have some bins for popular subjects: horses, sharks, dinosaurs, football, baseball, jokes, dogs, cats...It helps with shelving (I have an assistant in the library about 3 hours a day) and it makes my students feel successful in locating those highly sought after books. But going all the way? We are nowhere near that.  And so until then, we will continue to have FUN finding our way in the Dewey Section.

And finally, a tweet from the 4th grade ELA teacher.  Another compliment is when the classroom teacher thinks it's great lesson! Happy to get your students back in the Dewey Section (and beyond!), Mrs. Roe! You just say when!

Learning about the Dewey Decimal System in the library with Mrs. Rattner. @SchodackCSD @CastletonES @staceybethr pic.twitter.com/zeN0hHjYOI

— Amy McGarvey-Roe (@AMcGarveyRoe) September 12, 2019

Dear Neighbor Please Vote

It's Election Day eve.

Former Mayor Keegan

For over a month, I have been collaborating with the 4th grade Social Studies teacher on a voting project.  Through project based learning, we had a goal to increase the percentage of people from our town who vote in the midterm elections. We learned about the amendments, the history of voting and even why the first Tuesday in November. Guest speakers shared their experiences as elected officials with us and we got inspired.  Former Mayor Joe Keegan of Castleton really drove the message home. "First I was down by three votes, then two, then one...I see people on the street and they say, 'Sorry Joe I forgot to vote.'"  If only they had voted...The only woman on the Schodack Town Board, Tracey Rex, spoke to us about women in politics. Assemblyman Jake Ashby and School Board member Mike Tuttle also spoke to our students.

Schodack Town Board Member Tracey Rex

Our ultimate goal is to increase the number of people who vote in tomorrow's election from the last midterm election. Given that people are supposed to go out in record numbers tomorrow to vote, we may or may not have an impact.  But we'd like to think we did.

4th graders designed postcards to be distributed to every student at CES and a few made a video. Feel free to share the video.  Listen to the kids. Exercise your right to vote.  Don't count on your neighbors to make decisions for you.

Finally, dear Neighbor. Watch and be inspired by these young people. Then set your alarm as a reminder. See you at the polls.
We thank you.

And the winners are...

While driving my daughter to ballet this morning I had butterflies dancing in my belly.  At first I was trying to figure out why.  We already saw Dear Evan Hansen last month.  I don't have any big plans for February break.  Hamilton is still too far in the future to be butterfly excited.  Even TLA is a few months away. Then, what could it be? Oh yeah...Youth Media Awards are MONDAY! That's gotta be it!

The cake is ordered. Two to be exact, since we are having so many kids at our viewing party.  The link has been tweeted and sent home with parents. Mother Nature is going to cooperate. Finally.  Mock Results are in (sort of) and Consensus Club came up with a, well, consensus.

Caldecott 

The snow day and delays really threw us off with Mrs. Roe's Caldecott class.  The highlight, though, was Skyping with Mike Curato, illustrator of All the Way to Havana, yesterday morning after he walked the adorable Princess Leia.  The second graders stumped him as they fired off "What's your favorite...?" questions but he held his own quite well, especially for 9:00 am!  We will all be rooting for him on Monday.

Because we ran out of time, Mrs. Roe will be conducting the vote first thing Monday morning. On a side note: I do like the MST event--it gives us time to work out glitches, do a few things and not mess with specials in 4th and 5th grade. Thank you ALSC and Denver.

Geisel

We didn't run a classic Mock Geisel this year with Mrs. Kosinski's first graders.  A "Read It-Make It-Take It" project morphed into a Geisel project as we ended up creating activities around all the Geisel contenders.  We did 13 projects and read 17 books!  And that doesn't include Jasmine Toguchi Mochi Queen, one of our first projects. No surprise that Ninja in the Kitchen was the favorite since making the pizza from scratch was pretty fun! My favorite? Charlie and Mouse and Grumpy by Laurel Snyder.  When I read that book aloud to them yesterday, I got a big ole frog in my throat.

My personal Geisel 2018 Analogy:

Jonathan Fenske is to laughing as Laurel Snyder is to crying.

Sibert

No standout winner here except for ALL our fourth graders! WOW!  They were amazing! We read a lot of books.  They chose their favorite and alone or with a partner(s), they created a 3-D project (some included food--cookies are cool but check out the grape barbells!), shared ten facts and wrote a persuasive paragraph on why their books should win the 2018 Sibert award. We know not all of our books can and will win but we have a feeling one or two (or three) just might. How to be an Elephant maybe?  Dazzle Ships (for sure?) Grand Canyon, maybe?  What about Nic Bishop's Penguin Day? And to hear the kids exclaim how much they love The Youngest Marcher is the coolest ever.

(Agh...I just spent a whole hour trying to figure out how to put Google Photos into a photo album.  Please look at all of these if you can--I am so proud of our fourth graders!)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/b5P2lP5uvJINkm7E2

Newbery

What can I say about Newbery?  I'm speechless. I look back in my book journal (yes, I do not use Goodreads) and have been reading, listening, discussing and scoring these books for the past 13 months. The final moment will come at around 10:50 EST. This is my sixth time doing this project and over the years we have experienced all different emotions from ecstatic, elated, happy, sad, disappointed, surprised, angry (yes, one year the kids boo'ed--we had a lesson on sportsmanship after that!) but always accepting.  It has taken me some time to realize that the decision comes down to fifteen librarians who may or may not have the same opinions, feelings, background as my students and I do and that's ok.  But it is a let down for me.  I still think about my "Kwame Kids" (2015) and last year screaming and leaping with Ashlynn in her footy PJs and even my first year with Ivan and the boys exclaiming, "Our book won!"  I love Newbery so much and wish we could be this intense about reading ALL year long.  You in, Mr. Reischer?

We did have our Consensus Club meeting yesterday after school.  It was one for the books, literally! The winner (but it was close!) was Orphan Island!  Honors went to: Beyond the Bright Sea, The Ethan I Was Before, Refugee and Chasing Augustus.

I must say that whatever books win on Monday, we are truly all winners for becoming critical, passionate and I hope, lifelong readers.  CHEERS.

The winding road to Jewell Parker Rhodes coming to CES

This is a "Where's Jewell?" picture

The most lovely, inspiring, joyous, huggable Jewell Parker Rhodes visited our school on Thursday. Her aura and magic is still lingering.  I imagine it will hang over us for a long time to come.

This post is not just a recap of our day, but a history of our relationship with Jewell...

It All Started with Sugar in 2013

Rewind three years and it all started with a Sugar book group for the 2014 Newbery project.  Look!  I even found the photos from our Skype with Jewell!  We have loved her ever since.

And now these kids are in 8th grade!  It's crazy how time flies...

Fast Forward to Late Winter/Spring 2016

We are so fortunate that we received arcs of Towers Falling through the Little Brown Faculty Lounge.  Mr. Reischer read it as a book group and both he and the students loved it.  Then I read it and loved it. Then Mrs. Warland read it and then....and then...and everyone who has read it since has loved it. Even our custodian picked up a copy on his break starting a few weeks ago.  I heard he just finished it.

A few pictures from our Skype in April with Jewell:

Here Mr. Reischer is giving feedback to Jewell

   

This Week

Jewell dazzled us this week as we welcomed and embraced her in our CES community for a few short hours this Thursday.  And she was a true sport about it, too!  Just moments after her toes felt the red carpet, I swept her into the office to have her say good morning on the announcements.  That's when she shared to our whole school community that in November she will be a grandmother to a little girl named Clara.  We are all so happy for her.

At our school wide assembly, we introduced our theme for the year, "We can be heroes" which came from Towers Falling.  We sat Jewell right in the front so she could watch it all.  To kick it off, Mrs. Golden's first graders sang an awesome song about heroes.  Next, we all loved hearing about the heroes of the students in Mrs. Kelliher's class.  We learned about the circle lesson in Towers Falling from Mr. Morse's class.  Mr. Reischer's class performed a great skit teaching us the important lesson on how we can all be heroes and all the fifth graders sang  a beautiful rendition of, "This Land is Your Land."  

Mr. Reischer's class skit*

Mr. Morse's class did the circles from Towers*

Mrs. Pryde's first graders came up and shared a timeline of her life.  Then Jewell and I did a little Q and A and that's when everyone in the room fell in love with her!  Silly me, I didn't even give her the questions in advance, but you would never know! She answered them so eloquently, you would have thought she had days to prepare.

                            

                                        Mrs. Pryde's class timeline*

Do you think this shirt was worn on purpose?

This is your life, Jewell!

Each 4th grade class researched and
created a Jewell Parker Rhodes from A-Z book*

For more pictures from that day, check it out here:  SCHODACK FLICKER for JEWELL (All pictures with an * are from this set.  Thank you Jason McCord!  I couldn't take many pictures myself!)

Jewell boarded her plane for California at noon.  She was with us for such a short time but boy did it make an impact.  People were talking about it the whole afternoon and next day.  Thank you, Jewell and Little Brown for bringing us all together!

Ms. Martin, Mrs. Hanna and Mrs. Brewer's third graders are loving Sugar.
They made this welcome sign for Jewell to hang by the red carpet!

I hope I have given the day what it deserves.  We love Jewell and were so thrilled to have her visit our school. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  We look forward to collaborating throughout the year and more! xoxo