Having fun while learning research skills in 4th grade

Frankly learning research skills isn't at the top of most students' list of fun activities. However, in this digital age there is no question that it is a must! 4th graders recently completed their Mystery Square projects. This activity immersed them in print and digital resources, synthesizing what they learned into something new, reinforcing previous paraphrasing practice, and giving them honest feedback from peers!

First students selected a country by choosing a popsicle stick from a jar. This introduced suspense but let me exercise a bit of control (I excluded countries that might be too obscure, as well as ones that many students have a lot of personal familiarity with)!

Next, they practiced their nonfiction comprehension skills by locating and paraphrasing facts about their country from the Enchantment of the World series and the CultureGrams database.
They reflected on all they'd learned and answered the following questions:

1. What is one important thing that you think everyone should know about your country?

2. What is one thing you admire about your country that we in America could learn from?

The answers to these questions were thoughtful and fascinating! For example, one student wrote about Haiti, "This country has suffered from poverty, but even through tough times they still managed to push through," and "The kids in this country have to help their parents to survive and I think kids in America should help their parents more."

The next step was creating their mystery squares with their four clues they thought were best on the outside flaps. Here's one for France: 

 

In the middle of the square they put their country's flag. Here is Ethiopia: 



 

We recorded each student reading out their clues and our last class session was devoted to a lively guessing game. They watched the videos, wrote their guesses on a mini whiteboard, and then waited with bated breath to see if they were right!

 

 

Video contest for teens - spark your own reaction!

Think you can "Spark a Reaction" and encourage other teens to read? If you're 13-18, you're eligible to enter this year's Teen Video Challenge sponsored by the Collaborative Summer Library Program.

You need to enter through your state of residence; the link to the Washington State Library's contest page is here. Your video encouraging teens to read over the summer should be 30-90 seconds long and should pertain to this year's theme, "Spark a Reaction!" Each state winner/winning group receives $275 - and, of course, the honor of publicity for their work.

Get out those video cameras - and take a look at this clever past winner from New York state - Alice in the Maximum Potter Games:

 

If you search YouTube or Vimeo for "CLSP" or "Teen Video Challenge" you can find many other entries for guidance and inspiration.

Book club fun!

Our second grade lunch recess book club had their first meeting on Wednesday! We're reading Almost Zero by Nikki Grimes, the third installment in her Dyamonde Daniel series. (The third grade club, which is reading the same book, starts today and the combined third/fourth grade club, reading Ramin Ganeshram's Stir It Up, meets on Monday!)

Kids who join book club are voluntarily giving up recess once a week to gather in the library learning commons to talk about what they read.

Almost Zero is a short book with a lot of depth. It is accessible even to young chapter book readers, but the subjects it deals with are profound ones: needs vs. wants, what parents owe their children, good manners and respect for others, compassion and generosity and gratitude...

We started off by discussing some of these topics. Students talked in pairs about what parents should do for their children - and they came up with some very insightful answers. Everyone agreed that one thing parents owe their children is guidance, which includes limits on behavior and possessions - sometimes saying "no" to requests or demands. This insight emerged independently from a group of 7 and 8 year olds, which really impressed me!

Next, the students worked in pairs to act out the scene from the book in which Dyamonde rudely insists that her mother has to buy her the expensive sneakers she wants. As you can see from their body language, they really got into the spirit of things! Their goal was to see if they could negotiate a different solution. We had some very strict "mothers" who reacted even more strongly than the mom in the book - but others gave a conditional "yes" (as long as Dyamonde saved up to pay for part of the cost herself).

We had so much fun on Wednesday and I can't wait to see what third graders do today!

Growing the next generation of leaders: the Student Diversity Leadership Retreat

In February, two 7th graders and two 8th graders (one boy and one girl from each grade) will represent our school at the third biannual middle school Student Diversity Leadership Retreat sponsored by the Northwest Association of Independent Schools.

Featuring around 100 attendees from schools in Washington, Oregon Utah and Nevada, the conference brings together caring young people and challenges them to become more aware of issues surrounding inclusivity and diversity in their school communities - and beyond. The hope is that they will use their new awareness to improve their middle schools and also hit the ground running as leaders in diversity when they enter high school. (Scroll down for more information on how to apply!)

Here are our 2012 OWS representatives at Northwest School!

The theme of the last middle school SDLR was "Is There a 'Me' in Media?" On Friday evening, students watched the young people's version of the powerful documentary, Miss Representation, which was created by an independent school parent. Afterwards they discussed the points raised by the film about bias in media portrayals of women.

Saturday was devoted to sessions led by high school students on a wide variety of topics relating to media literacy, including social networking (how we perceive others and how they perceive us), being advocates for equality through social media, reality TV and the value of privacy, and humor and stereotypes. Students concluded the retreat by creating public service announcements in their school groups to share the messages they found most important with their peers.

If you are a 7th or 8th grader at OWS and would like to apply to represent us at the 2014 middle school SDLR at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, OR, just fill out, print and sign the brief application form available on My Open Window on the Information Literacy Resource board and in the Downloads section of the 7th and 8th grade Advisory pages. It was also sent to your parents in email on November 8th. ***The deadline is November 22nd! Decisions will be announced by winter break!***

 

See yourself in print! Are you read for NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month gives people of all ages a chance to join others who'd like to write a novel and cheer one another one, share writing tips, etc. You set yourself a word goal and then work to meet it, turning off the voice of your inner critic for 30 days! Every published author talks about the endless revision process - but first you need to write something! And that's where NaNoWriMo comes in: for once it's about quantity, not quality.

To support our students, many of whom love NaNoWriMo, our library learning commons space will be devoted to offering them a quiet place to work - whether on our laptops or on paper - during 3rd & 4th graders' lunch recess and middle schoolers' break and tutorial times during the month of November.

If students would like to join our OWS NaNoWriMo class, just sign up on the Young Writers' Program page and send me your username!

What do you do when November is over, you've done edits and re-writes and now want to publish your book? You have a few choices! One option is to self-publish using a local service, such as Third Place Press, or an online one, such as the ones listed here. Figment is a site for teen writers to use to share their work and offer feedback to one another.

Stone Soup publishes writing by young people ages 8-13. Also check out Children Writing & Publishing and Kid Writers for additional ideas!

Happy writing!

What can we learn from Sweden?

This weekend I got to present some of my findings from my summer research trip to Sweden at the Washington state librarians' conference. My co-presenter was a high school librarian friend who studied Finnish libraries on a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching grant. Here we are in Yakima!
 

 

So, what did I learn? Far too much to cover here, or even in a one hour conference presentation! But one major take-away that impressed me was Swedes' fundamental respect for children, summed up beautifully in this recent statement from the Swedish Arts Council. It was their message to the world when Sweden was - for the first time ever - the focus of the Bologna Children's Book Fair. I urge you to read it in full, but here is an excerpt:

 

Children have a right to culture. We often regard childhood as something transitory, as a preparation for real life. But when does real life begin? Is it acceptable to let people live almost a quarter of their life before they count? Children’s right to culture is intertwined with children’s right to play a part in society. To be presented with challenging art. Different perspectives. A diversity of expression. Relevant, fun, surprising, inquisitive art. Children’s right not to be dismissed as cute but unimportant. Not to be laughed at indulgently. Children are human beings, fellow citizens. Slightly shorter, slightly less experienced. But they are living in the here and now. They are not simply waiting to grow up. We cannot predict their needs 20 years hence. But we can listen to them and find out what their needs are right now.

How does this relate to children's literature? This mindset helps Swedish writers, artists, teachers, librarians and parents remember that books are about exploring ideas, sometimes ideas that are uncomfortable for adults. I noticed how many Swedish children's books were free of the moralizing voice of the adult. The endings weren't always neatly tied up with everyone doing as they "should." They felt real and natural in a refreshing way. And overall they were of an incredibly high standard of literary and artistic merit - appealing for readers of all ages.

 

Here are a few more photos that I hope you'll enjoy! First, a tvillingpaket, or twin packet, containing the same book in Swedish and Arabic. Swedes believe strongly in supporting children's fluency in Swedish and their hemspråk, or the language spoken at home.

Here I am holding Nutte Nervös (aka Scaredy Squirrel) in the children's section of Husby library. Husby is a Stockholm suburb that experienced rioting in May - but was the site of a vibrant multicultural festival three months later!

 

If you have three minutes, watch this video from TioTretton (or TenThirteen) a library in Kulturhuset (The Culture House) in Stockholm that only kids ages 10-13 may enter!

 

Finally, a few photos of some of the very lovely books I had the pleasure of reading:

 

(From Babo pekar by Eva Susso)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neil Gaiman speaks his mind: Let children read the books they love

Arguably one of today's most popular and critically acclaimed authors, Neil Gaiman delivered a passionate defence this week of letting children read the books they enjoy. It's well worth your time to check out the full text of his speech, but in the meantime, here are some quotes that really spoke to me:

"The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. 

I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading.

It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you."

~~~

Thinking back on your childhood, were there books you loved that grownups disapproved of? Or books you didn't like that grownups attempted to foist on you? I feel fortunate in that my parents paid little attention to what I read, but a great deal of attention to insuring that I had the opportunity to read widely, from weekly trips to the public library to heaps of books all over the house.

If anyone looks down on your kids' reading choices (or your own!), just tell them you've got Neil Gaiman on your side!