Your table is ready!  Second grade students were welcomed to the Library for a book tasting where they got to try books in different genres including realistic fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and fantasy.  Using their menus, students got to be critics as they reviewed each of the genres they tasted.  The Cardinal Cafe has been really busy...good thing second grade made reservations!

Students in second grade learned that November was International Games Month.  So, we played games, of course!  We talked about how there are different kinds of games--board games, card games, video games, etc.  We then read Drew Daywalt's hilarious, The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors before engaging in our own Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament.  Students then had a chance to try our different games in the library.  

Second grade students had a lively discussion about how to tell the difference between a fiction and a nonfiction book.  Nonfiction books often use photos instead of illustrations, and they usually contain features such as a table of contents, captions, glossary, and/or index.  Can you tell the difference?

How many books are in our library? Close to 19,000!  So, how do we find a specific book that we are looking for?  We search the electronic catalog to find the book's call number.  This helps us find it on the shelf.  Second grade used tangram tiles to see that there are different ways of organizing groups of things--by shape, color, size, etc.  Books in our library are organized alphabetically by the first three letters of the author's last name. 

Second grade students always check out books at the end of library class.  They have been learning how to use the library's electronic catalog to find books and are then able to check them independently.