 This week we are kicking off another year of our OPS Library Reading Clubs. These voluntary clubs are open to 1st - 6th grade students, and provide students with an opportunity to earn prizes for reading a wide variety of age-appropriate and award winning fiction and nonfiction literature. Details for each club are included below (click on "fullscreen" just under the document to read.) We will also be sharing information about the clubs with our students during their library class over the next week or so. If you have any questions regarding the clubs please don't hesitate to contact Mrs. Lisa Santangelo.
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As we approach the summer break, we are still hard at work here in the OPS Library Media Center  © 2024 Ruth Chan Our Kindergarten students have been working on their ability to infer what will happen in a story as well as to 'hear' the tone and mood in an author's writing. We've also looked at the work of author/illustrator Ruth Chan.  © 2024 Jon Agee Speaking of authors, our first graders have been studying the work of well known authors Mac Barnett and Jon Agee. Meanwhile, our second grade students have been comparing fiction and nonfiction books on the same subject, practicing their inference skills, and looking at how a fairy tale can be 'fractured' to create a new take on a classic tale.  Identifying the main idea of a nonfiction article is an important information literacy skill that our third graders have continued to practice in May. They've learned how to spot clues in an author's writing that point to an article's main idea, and how to articulate that main idea in their own words. Our fourth graders have continued their work learning the basics of MLA 9 citations for sources as diverse as books, websites, and images. They've also taken a look at the 2024 Newbery Medal and Honor books as well as celebrated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by looking at the work of several celebrated AAPI authors.  As the saying goes, every picture tells a story, and our fifth grade students are proving that right now as they hone their visual literacy skills by identifying story elements from an image provided to them from Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and using them to write an original story of their own. Our sixth grade students are wrapping up their climate change research and have been presenting their research to their classmates.
 April has been a busy month in the OPS Library. Our Kindergarten students have been looking at what it means to be part of a community. They have learned about community helpers and identified the roles they play in a community. In addition, we have looked at the difference between wants and needs, and how a community needs to balance both in order to best serve the people of the community. Our first grade students have been studying how to identify the tone and mood of a text. They have also put their inference skills to the test predicting what will happen next in a story. Meanwhile, our second grade students have been looking at the difference between a fact and an opinion, and honing their visual literacy skills by looking at how illustrations can contribute to a text.  Our third and fourth grade students have been busy as well. Third grade is practicing how to identify the main idea of a nonfiction book or article, and our fourth grade students have been learning the basics of MLA 9 Citations. In fifth grade, our students have just finished a unit on avoiding plagiarism by learning how to summarize and properly cite sources within a paper. This past week they began a new unit on storytelling, in which they will use their visual literacy skills to identify key story elements in an illustration they can use to craft an original story.  Last but certainly not least, our sixth grade students are finishing up a multi-part research unit on climate change. Throughout the research process they have learned important research concepts such as the use of open vs. closed questions to guide their research, the importance of evaluating sources, and the need to properly cite those sources when doing research projects. They are currently hard at work on creating a slide or video presentation on what they have discovered about climate change and will be sharing them with their classmates over the next week or so.
With the end of the school year rapidly approaching, we hope you are enjoying the more temperate weather and hope to see you soon in the OPS Library! This month we welcomed three distinguished children's authors to OPS. 2024 Caldecott Medal winner Vashti Harrison paid a visit to our K - 2nd grade students. Ms. Harrison spoke about her career as an illustrator, read aloud her 2024 Caldecott Medal winning book Big, and shared with our students how she draws the book's main character. The next day our 5th and 6th graders were paid a visit by Newbery Honor Book award winning author Veera Hiranandani. Veera shared aspects of her life story, elaborated on her writing process, and answered questions from our students. The following week author/illustrator Jason Patterson visited with our 3rd and 4th graders, and shared with them how he works with his partner Dan Abdo to create the Barb the Last Berzerker and Blue, Barry & Pancakes graphic novel series. We'd like to thank the OPS PTA for working so hard to bring these wonderful authors to our school to share their experiences and creative work with our students. Thank you!
 Thanks to our wonderful Oradell PTA, we are preparing for some exciting author visits the first week in March.
Our K - 2nd grade students will be visited by the 2024 Caldecott Medal winning author Vashti Harrison on Tuesday, March 5th. A NY Times bestselling author, Ms. Harrrison will share with our students her writing process, demonstrate how she illustrates her books, and answer questions from students. Jason Patterson, co-creator of the graphic novel series Barb The Last Berzerker and Blue, Barry & Pancakes will be paying our 3rd and 4th grade students a visit on Thursday, March 7th. Jason is an accomplished author/illustrator who will share his love of illustration and storytelling with our students. Newbery Honor Book award winning author Veera Hiranandani will visit with our 5th & 6th grade students on Wednesday, March 6th. Ms. Hiranandani is the author of four chapters books and a beginning chapter book series. Her book The Night Diary was a 2019 Honor Book award winner. Ms. Hiranandani will share insights into her writing process and talk about her new book Amil and the After, her follow up to The Night Diary. If you'd like to find out more about any of our visiting authors, please visit the author presentations located at the bottom of our OPS Library Media Center website's home page.  Our K - 6th student judges cast their votes and the winners of the 2024 OPS Picture Book Awards are:
Best Illustrations: We Are Starlings by Robert A. Furrow and Donna Jo Napoli with illustrations by Marc Martin Best Message: Bibi by Jo Weaver Best Overall: Evergreen by Matthew Cordell We'd also like to congratulate the winners of the PTA's 2024 OPS Picture Book Awards Design Contest. The winning designs were submitted by: Best Illustrations Award Design: Takeru H. Best Message Award Design: Satvik K. Best Overall Award Design: Jacob C. As part of our preparation for our Read Across America celebration in March, we will be kicking off our fourth annual OPS Picture Book Awards this week. The OPS Picture Book Awards are a school-wide reading event where five nominated picture books published in 2023 are read aloud to all of our students in grades K - 6. After having all five books read aloud to them, our students have an opportunity to judge the books and award three OPS Picture Book Awards for Best Message, Best Illustrations, and Best Overall. The winning book(s) receive an award sticker and are made available (along with the other nominees) to all of our students in the OPS Library. This year's nominees are We Are Starlings by Robert Furrow and Donna Jo Napoli with illustrations by Marc Martin, Evergreen by Matthew Cordell, A Few Beautiful Minutes by Kate Allen Fox with illustrations by Khoa Le, Oh, Olive by Lian Cho, and Bibi by Jo Weaver.
As part of this year's awards, the OPS PTA has been kind enough to run a design contest for each of the three award stickers that will be affixed to the winning book(s). If your OPS student is interested in participating in the design contest, please click here to download an official entry form.  It's been a busy month already in the OPS Library and we're only half way through December. Our Kindergarten students have been learning about how authors and illustrators use words and pictures to tell stories. We've looked at books without pictures, wordless picture books, and even a story told with just two words - banana and please.  Our 2nd and 3rd graders have been looking at two types of nonfiction, narrative and expository. We've read examples of both, and discussed how they differ. In library club our 2nd - 6th grade students have been enjoying some spirited games of magnetic chess whenever they are not reading, reading, reading.  Our fourth grade students have been learning the difference between primary and secondary sources by looking at examples of both and applying what they've learned to a variety of scenarios where these sources are used. Citations have been our focus in the fifth grade, with our students learning how to create citations for a variety of books.  In the sixth grade our research into climate change continues, with our students calculating their carbon footprint and considering how global warming might affect communities throughout the world. We hope you enjoy the holiday season and we're looking forward to a wonderful 2024 with our students!
 We've been busy in the OPS Library throughout the month of November. Our K - 2nd grade students have been learning about authors, illustrators, and the elements they use to create a story - characters, setting, and plot. In library club, our 2nd - 6th grade students have been building on that knowledge by creating wanted posters for their favorite villainous characters.  Meanwhile, our third grade students have been doing a deep dive into the Dewey Decimal System, while our fourth grade students have been learning how to evaluate a reference resource using our Lightbox Multimedia eBooks. In the fifth grade, we are discussing plagiarism and have begun to learn how to properly credit a creator in our writing using in-text mentions and work cited pages.  Research is the focus in our sixth grade classes, as we begin to look at climate change and its affect on our daily lives. For the next several weeks, our sixth graders will be using the Big 6 Research Process to investigate questions they have developed about climate change using a variety of print, online, and multimedia reference resources of their choice. It has been a busy first two months of OPS Library Club as students have engaged in reading, games, and building projects. What will happen next month? Stay tuned.
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