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National Young Readers Week

It is National Young Readers Week!

To celebrate, Mrs. Mapes will be camped out with a book all day today. The students will have to follow a trail to find her and have her read to them. Tomorrow, Mrs. Teaff will be on the playground reading to students at recess. All teachers have been challenged to read aloud to their classes this week. I challenge parents to also join us and read aloud to your kids this week. You are never to old to enjoy a good book.

Pizza hut is giving away 2 free ebooks and 1 free audiobook this week. Claim your copies now.

http://bookitprogram.com/amazon/

AR Tiger Teams

Let's team up and have a little reading competition! Each six weeks, the teams with the most points, highest percent correct, and most students making their goal will be honored in the library. Teams will consist of randomly placed 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders across all classes. Come to the library this week to spin the wheel and see which team you will join.

Summer Reading Opportunities

My last post was all about preventing the summer slide by encouraging reading throughout the summer. The kids were a little upset with me when I suggested that they need to keep reading every day this summer, but I assured them that this reading is strictly for fun. Anything goes!

Here are some ideas for encouraging summer reading:

• Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge - Read 20 minutes a day, even in the summer! Join our school as we take on the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. Scholastic is challenging students all over the world to continue reading throughout the summer. Log in and log your reading minutes each day, and check out our school’s progress on the map. There will be prizes.
• Book Adventure - Show what you know by taking a quiz over the books you read. Just like AR,  Book Adventure awards points for reading books. Parents can create special awards for point levels. 
• ebooks - Don’t forget about our library’s ebook collection. The library is closed for the summer, but the ebooks are still available. Use your school username and lunch number to login and download books.
• Epic Books - Like Netflix for books. Sign up for an account with the first month free. Read unlimited books each month. 
• 10 Weeks of Summer Reading Adventures - lists of activities to do with books all summer long 
• Character Trading Cards - Make a trading card for characters in the books you read 
• Newsela - news articles, reading levels can be adjusted, Spanish translation, quizzes after reading 
• Storyline Online - watch videos of celebrities reading favorite books 
• Tales2Go - ebooks for your mobile device. Try it for free on your tablet, laptop, or PC 
• Pizza Hut BookIt! Read and Do Activities - lists of books and activities to do with each of them in areas such as art, birds, camping, dragons, etc. 

And don't forget to visit the public library to get your own library card. While you're there check out some cool summer programs.

Special Guest Performances by:

• Reah Easley (Old Timer Raccoon), 
• Kornpop the Clown, 
• Nancy Worcester the ventriloquist, and 
• a magic show
• June 7th, 14th, 21st, and 27th at 10:30 am

Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

Summer Slide - the loss of academic skills over summer break

Students can lose up to 3 months of learning during the summer if they don't continue to practice the skills they learned in school. Studies show that 20-30 minutes of reading each day will help students retain their reading skills from the previous year.

Teachers and parents, we can prevent summer slide. This summer our school is participating in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, a free online reading program that invites children to log their reading minutes all summer.

http://www.scholastic.com/summer

The goal is for the students in our school to read the most minutes possible in an effort to win “Best in State” recognition and a mention in the Scholastic Book of World Records. With your help, we can do it. Students are challenged to read 20 minutes a day and log their minutes on the Scholastic website. The challenge runs May 9th-September 9th. Ask your teacher for a username and password if you are interested in participating. Try not to lose your username and password. You will need it all summer. 

I will be checking the site periodically to see how our summer reading stacks up against other schools in the nation. I will share the results throughout the summer on this blog, on Facebook, and Instagram. 

Stay tuned for more summer reading suggestions.

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2016-2017 Bluebonnet List & Resources

The Texas Library Association has released the resources to go along with all of the books on the  current Bluebonnet list. These include reader's theater, links to video interviews of the authors and illustrators, activities, discussion questions, and websites to go with each book.
2016-2017 TBA Master List Resources

BINGO!!!

Let's play Library BINGO! Students are encouraged to read different genres and areas of the library to get 4 or 5 in a row on their BINGO sheet. There will be a fun play day at the park in May for anyone that gets a blackout. Quizzes are valid during the 5th and 6th Six Weeks only (Feb 16-May 13).

Rules for each grade level vary. Please see the Library BINGO sheet and rules for clarification.

Classroom BINGO - A special challenge from Mrs. Mapes! Are you up to it? 

Classes keep track of books read aloud by the teacher. Special class prize at the end of the school year. Remember that books logged on the classroom BINGO chart cannot be logged on the individual student charts.

Create a Book Wish List

Your reading teachers have been very busy learning all about Accelerated Reader. I want to share one thing that kids and parents might like: creating a book wish list.

Our presenters shared 2 great resources for finding books on a specific grade level, and I want to share these resources with you. I think you will find these to be very helpful in creating a list of books that you are interested in and that are on your reading level.

• What Kids Are Reading - Do you want to know what is popular with other kids your age? This website will show you which books are most read and tested on in AR. You can even filter the results by grade level, gender, reading level, state, type of book, and keyword. 
• Click Create Lists of Popular Books
• Choose grade and click Add Filter
• To add more filters, click the plus sign in the white bar at the top next to Your Filters
• Save/Print results will give you a pdf of the top 25 books matching your search
• ARBookFind - Quickly search to see if a book has an AR test, reading level, how many points, or do an Advanced Search to find books of interest. Search by reading level, points, topics
• Click the Advanced Search tab
• Skip down to ATOS level and put in the reading range of books that you are comfortable reading
• Addtional Criteria - choose a topic and a subtopic to narrow down your genre
• Choose Fiction/Nonfiction and the language
• Sort by author, title, book level, or rating
• Go
• Print to create a pdf of the list
• GRIS Online Catalog - Look for books in our library that are on your reading level
• Click the Search tab and go to Study Programs
• Put your reading range in Minimum and Maximum Reading level boxes
• Decide how many points you would like the book to be worth (remember that for each point, the book should take 2 days to read)
• Keyword: type a topic that you would like to read about
• Search

Accelerated Reader - Weekly Diagnostic Report

Accelerated Reader has quite a few helpful reports for checking on the status of your class. One of my favorites is the Diagnostic Report.
You can find this report under:

• Accelerated Reader
• Reports
• Reading Practice
• Diagnostic - Reading Practice
• Reporting Period - Change Predefined Date Range to the current Six Weeks
• Click View Report

In the sample report, you see that there are 5 points that you should look at for all students.

1. RP quizzes - tells how many quizzes a student has taken in the current marking period. You can quickly see which students have not taken a test.
2. % Correct - Scan the list for students that have lower than an 85% Average. These students need to conference to determine if the books they are reading are too hard or if there is another reason why they are not passing tests. You might need to sit with these students through 1 or 2 tests and help them with the test taking procedures.
3. Points - If you have set point goals for your students, you will see the percentage of their personal goal that each student has met. How to set a Goal in AR, AR Goal Calculator, & AR Goal Setting Chart, AR Goal Setting Chart AR 2000 (appears to be more lexile friendly)
4. Book Level - You can also set book level goals for each student. Here you will see the average book level that they have been reading. You can check to make sure they are reading in their ZPD range.
5. Diagnostic Codes - These codes will help you identify areas of weakness and conferencing topics for struggling students. A key will print on the second page of the report. Here you will also find the % of students at-risk for this class. At-risk means that a student has one or more diagnostic codes for the report period. The goal for the teacher is to have as few students with Diagnostic Codes as possible. For now, our goal is 15% or less. 

Divide and conquer

In our library lessons we have been learning about tackling a chapter book. Some of the kids have said that the book they checked out is too long and they can't read it. We talked about a few key tips when choosing an appropriate book.

• Look at the cover
• Read the blurb
• Flip through some pages and make sure it doesn't look too intimidating or too easy
• Read a page and use the 5 finger rule to make sure it is just right.

You can get some information about the level of the book and how long it should take to read the book by looking at the AR label on the spine.

RL stands for reading level. It is an approximation of a grade level that the book would be appropriate for if the student is reading on grade level. 4.2 means 4th grade, 2nd month. It is pretty accurate, but not perfect. The student still needs to open the book and give it the 5-finger test to make sure it is a just right book.

PTS stands for points. This is the number of points the book is worth after taking an AR test. The points can also tell us how long it should take to read the book. A good rule of thumb is to double the points to determine the number of days you should read a book. This 8 point book should take no more than 16 days to read.

Divide and Conquer is a strategy meant to break a long chapter book into smaller, more manageable pieces. To find the number of pages you should read every day, use the following formula:

Total pages in book / number of days to read the book (points doubled) = pages per day

For this example, the book has 289 pages and it should take 16 days to read.

289 / 16 = 18 pages per day

Then we break the book into 18 page sections and mark them with sticky notes. Sometimes the 18th page will fall in the middle of a chapter. You may have to go forward or backward a few pages to find the beginning of a chapter or you may be able to find a natural break in the middle of a chapter (extra space between two paragraphs, or a dividing line or symbol between two paragraphs). Do this until you reach the end of the book and you have divided your book into daily reading assignments. Now you can conquer the reading.

AR Goal

At the end of each six weeks, anyone that makes their AR goal will be allowed to come to the library and shoot two free throws. Let's have some fun with this.
Let me know if you need help with goal setting. Look back at my Accelerated Reader post from early last week for more helpful info and resources.