This year we have 6 teams participating in our district's annual Battle of the Books! We will begin practicing after Labor Day. Teams and practice schedules will go out at the end of the week of August 19th. There will be a school battle as well as a district battle in November!

Each month the GHES Smores Newsletter includes Media Minutes which lets you know what is happening in the library! Follow the link that is included with the Media Minutes and it will take you to all the Media Minutes we've had so far this year. 

During the month of February, one third grade class will meet each week for a special book club in the library. The boys will be reading "Race Forever - A Choose Your Own Adventure Book." The girls will be reading "Cleo Edison Oliver - Playground Millionaire." Each book club will participate in a special acvitiy that goes along with their book. The boys will participate in a Lego Race Car Derby and the girls will participate in a craft fair in order to earn money for their class passion. 

Why do we do a Fall and Spring Book Fair every year? Besides they're loads of fun?? In the state of South Carolina, our school libraries have standards associated with our collections (books and other resources). Our libraries have to stay current (our books should not be too old) and we have to have a certain number of books for each student (when you have over 900 students, that's a ton of books)! When we have a book fair, we are able to take our profits in Scholastic Dollars, which means we get 50% of what we make. If we make $9,000 during a book fair, we get to keep $4,500 in Scholastic Dollars and purchase new books for our library. So when your child comes home with a brand new book or tells you about a resource they enjoyed, part of that comes from what we earn during the book fair!

This book fair will come with a parent night on February 26th! Stay tuned for more information!

During the first week of March, we will be celebrating Read Across America Week! Each day students will listen to a read aloud from the list of Picture Book Award Nominees. K-2nd will be voting on these books to decide who they think the winner will be. 3rd-5th will also watch a book trailer after the read aloud so they can vote on the best Children's Book Award Nominees. Students will participate in a trivia contest associated with each read aloud and have the opportunity to win Reading Swag Bags! When we determine our school's PBA winner and our CBA winner, we will create a banner to hang in our state competition this year. Wish us luck!