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The circulation is at an all time high. It is exciting to see students read so much and as well get a good handle on how many books they are able to manage over a week. This self regulation is key to developing awareness of their individual book needs and as well an ability to stay on top of their renewals and returns—they are doing really well!
First Steps and Junior Kindergarten have been checking out information about common birds in our neighbourhood such as the Barred Owl, Bald Eagle, Crow and Pacific Blue Heron. We looked at images, read fact books and listened to bird calls. Ask them to share their excellent bird calls with you!
Kindergarten has been learning more about snowflakes and have been introduced to non-fiction resources. We discussed the Caldecott winning book by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Snowflake Bentley, about the famous photographer Wilson Bentley, the first known photographer of snowflakes. Do you know how many sides a snowflake has? Ask them!
The Grade 1s have been continuing with Story Workshop. The Community Green Map of Oak Bay has been introduced as a storytelling resource. Where do you like to go in your community? Tell a story about it! James Taylor has also been in to share stories about Mount PKOLS (Mount Douglas).
The Victoria Migratory Bird Sanctuary is just outside the Grade 2 classroom window. Each student has chosen a bird from the Sanctuary to learn more about. They are going to be reading for information, recording what they have learned and soon sharing their new found knowledge with their community—that’s you! They are also using resources from artists in our community, Fenwick Landsdowne and a GNS parent Dr. Mike Edgell, as inspiration for their own paintings.
The Grade 3s have been having a Book Buffet! They have been looking at characteristics of book genres and as well checking out areas of our collection they may not have ventured to before while also learning about the Dewey Decimal System.
Grade 4 has been knee deep in Heritage Inquiry. Each student chose a topic from Canadian history to learn more about. They worked through the research process, and made community connections by learning about using local archives, libraries and museums to gain information. The Grade 4s learned about using and recording primary and secondary sources, evaluating this information as well reviewing note taking and citing sources. The summative was writing up, ‘The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About…’ as well producing an artifact, created using the Design Cycle, to represent their topic. They recently presented this wealth of information for all to see in the Learning Commons.
Once again Grade 5 is battling it out with books. They have been working in teams reading and creating questions for their second ‘Book Battle’. The purpose of the ‘Battle’ is to encourage students to read and discuss different genres of books related to their Units of Inquiry. There are four teams per class and each team has a bin of eight titles to read. Students can split titles up so each team member only has to read a few but the students are encouraged to read as many of the titles as possible. The teams then create questions for the other teams to answer at the ‘Book Battle’ which we will hold on March 16.
We recently had a virtual visit from Canadian author, Lisa Bowes who shared her, Lucy Tries, series with Kindergarten to Grade 3, which are about trying new kinds of sports such as Luge and Short Track Skating. We also enjoyed a virtual visit from Oak Bay Archivist, Anna Sanders with the Grade 4s to learn more about our local archive, primary sources of information and what an archivist does in a community.
Thank you so much for the book donations for our Library collection. It is fantastic to be able to share even more resources with our students.
Happy Reading!
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