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.
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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.
Library Organization: Over the past few weeks our kindergarten through fourth graders have been learning how our OPS Library is organized, where to find certain types of books (fiction, nonfiction), and how to properly browse for a good book. Our kindergarten, first, and second grade students have practiced using shelf markers, and learned how to select a book using the five finger rule. Our third grade and fourth grade students have focused on searching for books in our Follett Destiny online catalog, identifying the section the book is located in, and then accessing them efficiently. In addition, the third and fourth grades will be learning about the Dewey Decimal System and how best to locate books in the nonfiction section of the library. Bookji - Our fifth and sixth grade students are learning to use a new book recommendation tool, Bookji. Bookji allows our students the opportunity to safely discover, share, and rate books that they are interested in reading. For our fifth and sixth grade ELA teachers, Bookji provides a way for them to see what their students are reading, check their reading progress, and provide book suggestions. 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.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash To Our Students:
We want you to know that we are excited to kick off the 2023 - 2024 school year by welcoming you to our Oradell Public School (OPS) Library. We can't wait to see you enjoying all of the great library books we have to share with you. New School Year, New Books: Speaking of books, we're thrilled to announce that we have over one hundred new books to share with our students beginning Thursday, September 14th when we kick off our library borrowing for the year. The new books include a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction titles ranging from realistic fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels to biographies, natural sciences and history. We can't wait to share all of these new books with our entire OPS community. Reading Clubs: On Tuesday, September 26th we'll be 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 will be sent home with students the week of September 18th. 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. Lunchtime Library Club: Beginning on September 14th, we will once again be holding our 2nd - 3rd grade and 4th - 6th grade lunchtime library clubs. The monthly clubs are voluntary and will run on an alternating day schedule during each grade's recess period. 2nd - 3rd grade students who sign up for the club will attend on A, C, and E days, and 4th - 6th graders will attend on B, D, and F days. Sign ups will take place in the library, and students who are interested should express their interest in joining the club to Mr. Mangol. Please note that sign ups are monthly on a first come, first serve basis, and each club can only accommodate 15 - 16 students. All of this information will be discussed with students during library class over the next few weeks, but feel free to reach out to Mr. Mangol if you have any questions. Graphic novelist Kayla Miller will be paying a visit to our fifth and sixth grade students on Friday, March 31st. Kayla is the author/illustrator of the New York Times best-selling graphic novel series, Click, and co-author of its spin-off series Besties. They will be sharing insights into their writing and illustrating process as well as answering questions from our students. To find out more, please visit Kayla's author study presentation at the bottom of the OPS Library Media Center website's home page. |
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