Happy Year of the Pig!
 |
| From Library Photos |
It was a busy week at the Amigos & King schools, with both sides of the building preparing Valentine’s displays & celebrations of the Chinese New Year. King School students showed great creativity in their Chinese New Year assembly on Wednesday, and the hallways are swinging with paper lanterns. The Amigos Schools students marched through the halls of the school on Friday, carrying a dragon on their backs, banging instruments and carrying signs to wish the school community well in the new year. The library gathered its Chinese New Year books and made a quick display, with one of our favorite puppets basking in the glory of having his own year to anticipate.
 |
| From Library Photos |
For now, February break gives everyone a chance to rest up from the week’s festivities and prepare to enter the next month with renewed energy & excitement. Have a great vacation!
WOW!
The Amigos first graders came into the library yesterday afternoon. I know how much they love their Chinese lessons with Ms. June, so I showed them the new books we have by Huy Voun Lee. When I held up 1,2,3, Go! they began to count in Chinese without any prompting. It gave all the adults in the room goosebumps. “Wow,” we said, “Can you do that again?” Sure enough, they counted in Chinese all the way through the book. Look for all four of Huy Voun Lee’s books in our library.
Couch Potatoes
It’s okay to be a couch potato if you are reading a book. Today was the 100th day of school celebration in the Amigos Spanish kindergarten. Right in the middle of library, the couch donated by Circle Furniture arrived. Five students at a time sat on the couch and Eva declared, “It’s delicious!” When all the dust settles we’ll have a cozy reference area. Thank you to Peggy at Circle Furniture 
The first sixth grader to enjoy quite reading on the new couch. Oh lucky day!
 |
| From Library Photos |
A Universe of Inquiry
Experienced researchers from the 4th grade at the King school began a new project today. In a unit called “Sun, Earth, Moon” students will share their knowledge & ask probing questions about our earth, solar system, galaxy & universe.
 |
| From Library Photos |
4th graders arrived at the library ready to explore our printed materials about space; books, encyclopedias & magazines were on display at several “space stations.” Each station had large pieces of chart paper with prompts, questions & statements that encouraged students to respond. Responses varied from single words to elaborate drawings to imaginative statements.
This open-ended activity may give students a starting point for research as they begin to narrow down topics they might want to learn more about.
 |
| From Library Photos |
One of my favorite responses today…
Question: Would you want to travel to space? Why/why not?
Answer: “Yes, I would love to travel to space but first I need to get my space license.”
3-2-1…Blast off to the next research adventure!
On the Rug
 |
| From Library Photos |
We have a brand-new carpet that has allowed us to invite classes, recreational readers & Harvard Reading Buddies back into our space. Every little bit of furniture makes a difference.
 |
| From Library Photos |
Wiki Pioneers Share Their Knowledge
Since late December, two 6th grade classes in the Amigos School have been charting unknown technological terrain. Laurie Ferhani’s science classes visited & documented ecosystems around Boston including Deer Island, the Charles River, and Black’s Nook Pond. While it’s great to have information for ourselves, it’s even better to share the wealth, and that’s just what students have done with their “Boston Ecosystems” wiki.
A wiki is an expandable set of webpages that can be written and edited by anyone. Yes, anyone! Our wiki limits editing privileges to “members” (our students), but anyone can view the pages online. Students got an overview of the world of wikis, but most of the learning happened when they jumped in and started creating.
Students wrote individual articles & experimented with formatting text & saving their pages. Learning to use the (sometimes finicky) Wikispaces template was no easy task, but the pioneers displayed typical courage & determination and pressed onward.
One goal of using wikis is to share knowledge through a collaborative writing & editing process. The students have recently combined their individual pages (me) into group-written & edited articles (we) that synthesize and communicate the information students have gathered.
Take a moment to learn more about Boston’s ecosystems from our 6th grade experts today!
New Books for Middle Schoolers
An order of new YA literature arrived and it was so exciting to see the middle schoolers gobbling up the new books. As soon as word got out that there were new YA books, the library passes for book selection came rolling in. The order contained many books that I heard about at a workshop – The Best New Young Adult Books, led by a dynamic speaker, Kathleen Odean. After the workshop I was so excited about the new titles that I drove right over to Barnes and Noble to buy some of them. Melissa and I have been skimming through the new arrivals. Below are some of our favorites.
Marina Budhos’ Ask Me No Questions looks at the life of an immigrant family from Bangladesh after 9/11. The expression “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” goes to the heart of Nadira’s family’s problems. Her family attempts to gain asylum in the United States by driving to the Canadian border from their home in New York City. A lot is riding on their attempt to gain asylum. Their biggest fear is being sent back to Bangladesh and having to leave their life in America. As they wait for news of their father held in a detention center in Vermont, they watch the men of their tight knit Muslim community, disappear in the night. Today’s Boston Globe (1/30/07) has an article on the prospects for citizenship for people currently working without papers in this country. 
I bet you never knew Pop Warner of Pop Warner football got his start as a coach of Native American children in boarding schools run by the U.S. government. Pop Warner coached one of the greatest atheletes of this country, Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe – Original All-American by Joseph Bruchac is based on Bruchac’s research into Thorpe’s life – interviews with family members and the reading of many primary sources. Bruchac is an American Indian, as was Thorpe.
The Cabbage-cott Medal
With the announcement of the Caldecott and Newbery award winners, we’ve been busy sharing these new books with students. The title of this post refers to one first grader’s excited description of a book with a gold medal on its cover, “That book won the Cabbage-cott Medal!” he exclaimed.
Flotsam by David Weisner has been a jumping off point for looking at wordless books and more of Weisner’s award- winning books. Students have “read” the pictures together and discussed plot, character, setting and used descriptive language to describe what they see. A class of third graders seemed divided about whether they’d like words in the book: some students were concerned they wouldn’t know the “right” story, while others felt that no words left them “freer” to imagine their own narratives.
Welcome to the MLK/Amigos library blog!
We have a lot of new books and are happy to welcome classes back for library visits, now that we have a rug to sit on.
Come on in and check out some new titles!
