The March Reading Challenge is up and ready to be printed out for your student. The Media Center also has a few challenges already printed out for students that need it.

Kindergarten - 2nd Grade

3rd - 6th Grades

The 2nd semester book fair begins February 5th and ends February 9th. Each class will get to shop during their Specials time period. On Friday, the 9th, only students that were absent when their class shopped can come down and shop. Hope to see you there at the book fair!

5th & 6th grade:

• Copyright, Fair Use and Public Domain - What is Copyright? and Why is it important?

• We will be diving into Computer Science and how computers can compute the growth of a disease. 

  • We will be researching diseases and presenting what we learn with the Keynote App.

3rd & 4th grade:

• We be learning how to use the Keynote App. We will also practice doing research and how Keynote can make your presentation easy and amazing! Students will research an animal of their choice and present it to the class.

• Students will also learn about copyright and how important it is when doing research.

• Toward the end of February, students will start learning about loops, functions, and conditional statements when computer coding. We will also be getting our Scratch accounts for their coding lessons.

1st & 2nd grade:

• We will continue our coding lessons in Scratch Jr.

Kindergarten:

• Students will be learning about authors and illustrators.

• We will also learn the difference between fiction and non-fiction books. Students will play a game that helps them ask and answer questions while reading their books.

• Students will continue to learn how to use the Show Me App on their iPads for answering questions about their non-fiction books.

The Reading Challenges for February are up and ready for the students! December and January's challenges are in the Drive, as well. Students are not required to do those 2 months since they were put up late.

I like to read. Pretty obvious, considering my choice of job! My love of reading started at a very young age and even though some years I find it hard to reach my reading goals on Goodreads, I still manage to find the time to read. But what if you are someone that wants to read more books, but because of job schedules, your kids' afternoon schedules, there's little time left between getting the kids to bed and flinging your tired, stressed body into bed for a few of those zzz's before you have to get up the next morning and start all over again.

My advice is have a goal. Start your reading goal small, like one book a month. Most public libraries have the initial checkout period of 2-3 weeks.  My second piece of advice is don't beat yourself up if don't meet your goal. Sometimes LIFE gets in the way and you're too tired to read.  There are all kinds of benefits to having a regular reading habit, getting started is half the battle, but don't take my word for it, here are some helpful links that can help you get started.

• Calendar.com: "How to Make Time to Read" by Chonce Maddox

• Penguin Random House: "How to Make Reading a Habit" by James Clear

• Lifehack.org: "14 Ways to Cultivate a Lifetime Reading Habit" by Leo Babauta

School is in full swing and we're all getting into the routine a little easier than before in August. We had our Book Fair at the beginning of the month and it was successful! After I finished being sick, the students and I began talking about Digital Citzenship and how to be safe on the internet. We are setting up our MyOn account (a reading app) and will be discussing the different types of genres in the library. In October, we'll be learning how to use the online-school library catalog, Destiny Discover and delving deeper into the Dewey Decimal System.